RESISTING: A New Fast-Reroute Mechanism with Packet Distribution on P4-Programmable Switches

Equal Cost MultiPath (ECMP) is a routing solution that optimizes bandwidth efficiency in network infrastructure by using a hash algorithm on the switch’s data plane to distribute packet flows across multiple paths. However, the hash-based approach alone does not address link failures, making the deployment of a failure recovery solution critical to prevent service disruption and degradation. Fast Reroute (FRR) mechanisms enable rapid recovery when a link fails on the data plane, and integrating FRR with ECMP provides a more resilient solution. In this paper, we introduce RESISTING, a novel ECMP-FRR mechanism for programmable data plane devices. We evaluate our method against the state-of-the-art FRR mechanism on programmable switches by simulating up to three link failures. The results demonstrate that RESISTING achieves equal distribution of packet flows across available links, with no packet losses.