IETF: SRv6 uSID for AI Backends and Unified DC/WAN
The networking world is undergoing a major transformation, driven by the rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence and the need for more unified, efficient network architectures. Two recently submitted IETF drafts shed light on how SRv6 uSID addresses these challenges.
SRv6 for Deterministic Path Placement in AI Backends (ietf.org)
This draft explores how SRv6 uSID can enable deterministic path placement in AI backend networks, optimizing traffic management for AI training clusters. With AI workloads often characterized by predictable “elephant flows” and low ECMP entropy, traditional traffic management strategies fall short of meeting performance requirements.
The draft highlights how SRv6’s programmability allows for fine-grained network control, enabling mechanisms like an AI scheduler to select optimal paths. This approach significantly enhances load balancing and congestion management for GPU-centric workloads, which are critical to AI training. By leveraging SRv6, network operators can boost performance, improve resilience, and ensure deterministic traffic handling in hyperscale AI fabrics.
SRv6 Converged DC Frontend and WAN (ietf.org)
This document presents a converged SRv6-based solution for integrating Data Center frontend and WAN domains using SRv6 uSID. Traditionally, these domains have been managed separately, leading to operational complexity and inefficiencies.
The draft details how SRv6 enables a unified end-to-end network design that is stateless, replacing legacy VXLAN and MPLS designs and simplifying operations by creating unified data planes based on IPv6. This convergence eliminates complexities and inefficiencies associated with fragmented designs, enhances scalability, and enables flexible stateless service insertion by unifying the DC and WAN under a single SRv6 domain.
These drafts demonstrate how SRv6, leveraging its stateless nature and programmability, provides robust and scalable solutions for modern networking demands, from hyperscale AI fabrics requiring precise traffic control to streamlined DC-WAN interconnectivity.