Fast routing computation on InfiniBand networks

The InfiniBand architecture has been proposed as a technology both for communication between processing nodes and I/O devices, and for interprocessor communication. Its specification defines a basic management infrastructure that is responsible for subnet configuration and fault tolerance. Each time a topology change is detected, new forwarding tables have to be computed and uploaded to devices. The time required to compute these tables is a critical issue, due to application traffic is negatively affected by the temporary lack of connectivity. In this paper, we show the way to integrate several routing algorithms, in order to combine their advantages. In particular, we merge a new proposal, characterized by its high computation speed but low efficiency, with a traditional one, slower but more efficient. Our goal is to provide new routes in a short period of time, minimizing the degradation mentioned before, and maintaining, at the same time, high network performance.