RT info:eu-repo/semantics/conferenceObject T1 Evaluating Native Load Distribution of ARP- Path Bridging Protocol in Mesh and Data Center A1 Ibáñez Fernández, Guillermo Agustín A1 Carral Pelayo, Juan Antonio A1 Rojas Sánchez, Elisa A1 Giménez Guzmán, José Manuel K1 Ethernet, Routing bridges, Spanning Tree, Load Distribution K1 Automatización K1 Automation K1 CIENCIAS TECNOLÓGICAS K1 TECHNOLOGY AB RP-Path is a simple, low latency, shortest path bridging protocol for campus, enterprise and data center networks. We recently found that this protocol natively distributes the traffic load in networks having redundant paths of similar characteristics. The reason is that every new path between hosts is selected on-demand in a race among ARP Request packet replicas over all available paths: the first arriving replica gets its path selected on the fly. This means a continuous adaptation of new paths to variations on the load at links and bridges. To show this unique load distribution capability and path diversity property we use a number of simulations for complex scenarios, including two different simulators: one flow- based and one packet-based, and two basic topologies: data center and a regular mesh. We also verify this behavior on real hardware on a network of nine ARP-Path NetFPGA switches. The conclusion is that the ARP-Path protocol efficiently distributes traffic via alternative paths at all load levels, provided that multiple paths of similar propagation delays are available PB Communications (ICC), 2013 IEEE International Conference on , vol., no., pp.3769,3774, 9-13 June 2013 doi: 10.1109/ICC.2013.6655142 YR 2013 FD 2013-06-10 LK http://hdl.handle.net/10017/18881 UL http://hdl.handle.net/10017/18881 LA spa DS MINDS@UW RD 05-jul-2022