Bob Felderman
Bob Felderman spent time at both Princeton and UCLA before venturing
out into the real world. After a short stint at Information Sciences
Institute he helped to found Myricom, which became a leader in cluster
computing networking technology. After 7 years there he moved to the
San Francisco bay area to apply High Performance Computing ideas to the
IP and Ethernet space while working at Packet Design and later was a
founder of Precision I/O. All of that experience eventually led him to
Google where he's a Principal Engineer working on issues
in data center networking and general platforms system architecture.
Research Areas
Authored Publications
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Jupiter Rising: A Decade of Clos Topologies and Centralized Control in Google’s Datacenter Network
Joon Ong
Amit Agarwal
Glen Anderson
Ashby Armistead
Roy Bannon
Seb Boving
Gaurav Desai
Paulie Germano
Jeff Provost
Jason Simmons
Eiichi Tanda
Jim Wanderer
Amin Vahdat
Sigcomm '15, Google Inc (2015)
Preview abstract
We present our approach for overcoming the cost, operational complexity, and limited scale endemic to datacenter networks a decade ago. Three themes unify the five generations of datacenter networks detailed in this paper. First, multi-stage Clos topologies built from commodity switch silicon can support cost-effective deployment of building-scale networks. Second, much of the general, but complex, decentralized network routing and management protocols supporting arbitrary deployment scenarios were overkill for single-operator, pre-planned datacenter networks. We built a centralized control mechanism based on a global configuration pushed to all datacenter switches. Third, modular hardware design coupled with simple, robust software allowed our design to also support inter-cluster and wide-area networks. Our datacenter networks run at dozens of sites across the planet, scaling in capacity by 100x over ten years to more than 1Pbps of bisection bandwidth.
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Preview abstract
The magic of the cloud is that it is always on and always available from anywhere. Users have come to expect that services are there when they need them. A data center (or warehouse-scale computer) is the nexus from which all the services flow. It is often housed in a nondescript warehouse-sized building bearing no indication of what lies inside. Amidst the whirring fans and refrigerator-sized computer racks is a tapestry of electrical cables and fiber optics weaving everything together—the data-center network. This
article provides a “guided tour” through the principles and central ideas surrounding the network at the heart of a data center—the modern-day loom that weaves the digital fabric of the Internet.
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