Beyond fat-trees without antennae, mirrors, and disco-balls

Recent studies have observed that large data center networks often have a few hotspots while most of the network is underutilized. Consequently, numerous data center network designs have explored the approach of identifying these communication hotspots in real-time and eliminating them by leveraging flexible optical or wireless connections to dynamically alter the network topology. These proposals are based on the premise that statically wired network topologies, which lack the opportunity for such online optimization, are fundamentally inefficient, and must be built at uniform full capacity to handle unpredictably skewed traffic. We show this assumption to be false. Our results establish that state-of-the-art static networks can also achieve the performance benefits claimed by dynamic, reconfigurable designs of the same cost: for the skewed traffic workloads used to make the case for dynamic networks, the evaluated static networks can achieve performance matching full-bandwidth fat-trees at two-thirds of the cost. Surprisingly, this can be accomplished even without relying on any form of online optimization, including the optimization of routing configuration in response to the traffic demands. Our results substantially lower the barriers for improving upon today's data centers by showing that a static, cabling-friendly topology built using commodity equipment yields superior performance when combined with well-understood routing methods.