wFlatnet: Introducing Wireless in Flatnet Data Center Network

Abstract

The basic challenge of data centers is how to interconnect a huge number of servers while guaranteeing the performance of the network. Flatnet is a promising data center architecture that has proved its efficiency to connect a scalable number of servers and to achieve a high network capacity, fault-tolerance and low-cost while using only one network layer. However, its long path length impacts the transmission latency and prevents it from being a high performance topology. Based on Flatnet, we propose a new network architecture, called wFlatnet, which adds wireless links to the network as shortcuts aiming at minimizing the path length without adding a burden of installation and cost. The novel design will offer a topology where the distance between any two servers will not exceed four hops taking into consideration load balancing, aggregate bottleneck throughput, power consumption and fault-tolerance properties.