Application Layer Packet Processing Using PISA Switches

Abstract

This paper investigates and proposes a solution for Protocol Independent Switch Architecture (PISA) to process application layer data, enabling the inspection of application content. PISA is a novel approach in networking where the switch does not run any embedded binary code but rather an interpreted code written in a domain-specific language. The main motivation behind this approach is that telecommunication operators do not want to be locked in by a vendor for any type of networking equipment, develop their own networking code in a hardware environment that is not governed by a single equipment manufacturer. This approach also eases the modeling of equipment in a simulation environment as all of the components of a hardware switch run the same compatible code in a software modeled switch. The novel techniques in this paper exploit the main functions of a programmable switch and combine the streaming data processor to create the desired effect from a telecommunication operator perspective to lower the costs and govern the network in a comprehensive manner. The results indicate that the proposed solution using PISA switches enables application visibility in an outstanding performance. This ability helps the operators to remove a fundamental gap between flexibility and scalability by making the best use of limited compute resources in application identification and the response to them. The experimental study indicates that, without any optimization, the proposed solution increases the performance of application identification systems 5.5 to 47.0 times. This study promises that DPI, NGFW (Next-Generation Firewall), and such application layer systems which have quite high costs per unit traffic volume and could not scale to a Tbps level, can be combined with PISA to overcome the cost and scalability issues.

Next-Generation Payment System for Device-to-Device Content and Processing Sharing

“…The research on calculating the maximum capacity would also help decision makers to configure services dynamically, similarly to study [ 53 ]. Designing new service chain mechanisms in order to reduce the investment to core systems and integrating the proposed system with dynamic hardware run-time libraries to enable such collaborative systems would bring more intelligent solutions while increasing total performance [ 54 ].…”

The Future Roadmap of In-Vehicle Network Processing: A HW-Centric (R-)evolution

“…There is an extensive collection of works dealing with P4 in the state of the art, some of them focusing on the description of P4 packet processors [126], surveys of P4 potential applications [127], [128], [129] performance analysis [130] or extensions to support heterogeneous dataplanes [131] as well as the definition of an abstract model for programmable data planes [132]. The capabilities to exploit application layer processing are explored by authors in [133], enabling the fulfillment of FR7.…”