Toward Stable Interdomain Network-Application Integration

As an exemplary paradigm of network-application integration (NAI), flexible interdomain routing control, such as SDX and SDI, provides programmable interfaces for applications to specify end-to-end interdomain routes that span across multiple autonomous systems (ASes). Not only do they provide opportunities for applications to optimize their route control, they also allow network service providers to increase their business offerings. However, in an interdomain network, providing these frameworks to applications while running BGP, the de facto interdomain routing protocol, may introduce new stability issues. In this paper, we identify two such stability issues that can happen even if an application only wants to enforce very simple route control rules. To cope with these issues and ensure stable interdomain NAI, we develop a series of stability mechanisms to prevent them from happening, while maintaining the use-announcement consistency among ASes. We use real Internet topology and traffic traces to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed mechanisms.