oFIQUIC: Leveraging QUIC in OSPF for seamless network topology changes

Rybowski, Nicolas [UCL] Pelsser, Cristel [UCL] Bonaventure, Olivier [UCL]

Link state-routing protocols such as OSPF and ISIS are used in most if not all Internet Service Provider and enterprise networks. They both rely on flooding to distribute the network topology to all routers. Upon topology changes, all routers update their forwarding tables asynchronously which leads to transient events such as micro-loops and packet losses. We propose two improvements to OSPF in an extension called oFIQUIC. First, we use QUIC to exchange routing information between neighboring routers. Second, we revisit the OSPF flooding process. Instead of relying entirely on flooding to distribute topology changes, we establish secure remote QUIC sessions with distant OSPF routers to inform them of topology changes. This enables oFIQUIC to prevent transient loops by ordering the updates of the forwarding tables of all routers after a topology change. We add oFIQUIC to the BIRD implementation of OSPF. Our evaluation demonstrates that oFIQUIC prevents loops and converges quickly in different topologies.