MENOG25 – SRv6 uSID: Deterministic AI Backend Networking and Unified DC Frontend Design
At MENOG25 (menog.org), Ahmed Abdelsalam of Cisco Systems presented “SRv6 uSID: Deterministic AI Backend Networking and Unified DC Frontend Design.”
SRv6 uSID represents a fundamental transformation of the IP stack—shifting from best-effort transport to a programmable, stateless network fabric. It enables advanced capabilities such as overlays, traffic engineering, service chaining, multi-cloud connectivity, and optimized load balancing for AI networking.
Fully standardized at the IETF with over ten RFCs, SRv6 uSID enjoys a mature ecosystem spanning all major network vendors, merchant silicon, and open-source implementations.
In this presentation, we will provide updates on two key use cases currently defined at the IETF:
- AI Backend: SRv6 uSID for deterministic path placement in AI backends, enabling optimal load balancing and efficient GPU to GPU communicatio.
- DC Frontend: A unified end-to-end SRv6 uSID design, extending from the data center front end through the metro and up to peering, with built-in service chaining.
These use cases are documented in draft-filsfils-srv6ops-srv6-e2e-dc-frontend-wan (ietf.org) and draft-filsfils-srv6ops-srv6-ai-backend (ietf.org), co-authored with key industry partners including Cisco, Nvidia, Nebius, Oracle Cloud, and IBM. They have also been publicly presented by Microsoft and Nebius at major industry events such as the OCP EMEA Summit (Dublin, April 2025) [link] and MPLS & SRv6 World Congress (Paris, March 2025) [link] and [link].
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