Programming Protocol-Independent Packet Processors High-Level Programming (P4HLP): Towards Unified High-Level Programming for a Commodity Programmable Switch

Hang, Zijun; Wen, Mei; Shi, Yang; Zhang, Chunyuan

doi:10.3390/electronics8090958

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…OpenState has an abstraction as a superset of OpenFlow primitives to enable stateful handling of OpenFlow rules using extended finite state machines inside forwarding devices, which augment the capability and flexibility of the switches [296]. The Programming Protocol Independent Packet Processor (P4) allows the controller to specify the high-level functionality of the switches, which will be compiled into a control flow graph that can be mapped to different switches [556]. As the memory of switches is limited and may not be sufficient to store all rules when the network becomes large, several strategies, such as timeout and eviction mechanisms, flow rule aggregation, flow rule split and distribute, flow rule caching, etc., can be employed to store the rules in the limited memory [557].…”

Section: Switch Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comprehensive Survey on Knowledge-Defined Networking

Wijesekara

Gunawardena

2023

Telecom

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Traditional networking is hardware-based, having the control plane coupled with the data plane. Software-Defined Networking (SDN), which has a logically centralized control plane, has been introduced to increase the programmability and flexibility of networks. Knowledge-Defined Networking (KDN) is an advanced version of SDN that takes one step forward by decoupling the management plane from control logic and introducing a new plane, called a knowledge plane, decoupled from control logic for generating knowledge based on data collected from the network. KDN is the next-generation architecture for self-learning, self-organizing, and self-evolving networks with high automation and intelligence. Even though KDN was introduced about two decades ago, it had not gained much attention among researchers until recently. The reasons for delayed recognition could be due to the technology gap and difficulty in direct transformation from traditional networks to KDN. Communication networks around the globe have already begun to transform from SDNs into KDNs. Machine learning models are typically used to generate knowledge using the data collected from network devices and sensors, where the generated knowledge may be further composed to create knowledge ontologies that can be used in generating rules, where rules and/or knowledge can be provided to the control, management, and application planes for use in decision-making processes, for network monitoring and configuration, and for dynamic adjustment of network policies, respectively. Among the numerous advantages that KDN brings compared to SDN, enhanced automation and intelligence, higher flexibility, and improved security stand tall. However, KDN also has a set of challenges, such as reliance on large quantities of high-quality data, difficulty in integration with legacy networks, the high cost of upgrading to KDN, etc. In this survey, we first present an overview of the KDN architecture and then discuss each plane of the KDN in detail, such as sub-planes and interfaces, functions of each plane, existing standards and protocols, different models of the planes, etc., with respect to examples from the existing literature. Existing works are qualitatively reviewed and assessed by grouping them into categories and assessing the individual performance of the literature where possible. We further compare and contrast traditional networks and SDN against KDN. Finally, we discuss the benefits, challenges, design guidelines, and ongoing research of KDNs. Design guidelines and recommendations are provided so that identified challenges can be mitigated. Therefore, this survey is a comprehensive review of architecture, operation, applications, and existing works of knowledge-defined networks.

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Section: Switch Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comprehensive Survey on Knowledge-Defined Networking

Wijesekara

Gunawardena

2023

Telecom

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“…One concern at this point is that the decentralized controller will increase the complexity of the switch configuration. Works such as Sluice [23], SNAP [24], and P4HLPc [25] explore the configuration of multiple switches in a network. We can use these works to resolve the complexity of configuring switches.…”

Section: ) Decentralized Controllermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sluice [23] and P4HLPc [25] aim to hide the underlying restrictions of programmable switches in a network in order to provide unified high-level programming for all programmable switches. SNAP [24] provides a centralized programming model that views the distributed switches as centralized, relieving programmers of the need to place and optimize access to switch resources.…”

Section: Programming Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interleaved Sketch: Toward Consistent Network Telemetry for Commodity Programmable Switches

et al. 2019

Self Cite

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Network telemetry is vital to various network applications, including network anomaly detection, capacity planning, and congestion alleviation. State-of-the-art network telemetry systems are claimed to be scalable, flexible, all-purpose, and accurate. They adopt interval approaches that track network traffic in each interval and collect statistics for analysis at a specific epoch. However, interval methods are impaired by collecting inconsistency and clearing inconsistency, which pollute statistics. Moreover, The state-of-theart centralized controllers have long latency, which aggravates the discrepancy. Accordingly, we propose the interleaved sketch, a consistent and decentralized network telemetry system across all switches. Each switch has two asymmetric sketches that work in an interleaved fashion, and is self-supervised to improve consistency. The distributed control plane extracts the flow characteristics and provides network-wide telemetry with low latency. We build a P4 prototype of our proposed interleaved sketch and test it on a Barefoot Tofino switch. Experimental results demonstrate that our interleaved sketch achieves ideal accuracy at line speed, with 6% resource overhead.

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“…Researchers have also studied a way of translating high-level code into low-level rules using programming languages. This is the case of P4HLP, which uses a C-style high-level programming language, E-Domino, to generate P4 programs [6]. Another relevant work is Lumi [7], where the authors propose a system that allows users to ask questions about the network of a college in the form of intents and have the specific intent translated and deployed in the data-plane programming language.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

NAIL: A Network Management Architecture for Deploying Intent into Programmable Switches

Angi,

Sacco,

Esposito

et al. 2024

IEEE Commun. Mag.

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Programmable switches allow network operators to implement their customized network behavior. Despite its benefits, data-plane programmability has many practical challenges, including the ability to transfer intended behaviors on forwarding devices. Languages such as P4 represent a low level of abstraction, and corresponding programs are cumbersome to manage and configure for DevOps engineers, presenting a barrier to adoption. To facilitate such adoption, we propose NAIL, an architecture that allows network engineers to articulate desired network behaviors at a higher, more expressive layer and then translate such behaviors into executable code using a transpiler that acts as a network intent translator. NAIL can detect and properly instruct the network devices affected by the intent. Then, it offers continuous monitoring functionality to verify whether the intent is met. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our solutions with some use cases, showing the fast reaction to updates and the applicability of supplied intent.

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Programming Protocol-Independent Packet Processors High-Level Programming (P4HLP): Towards Unified High-Level Programming for a Commodity Programmable Switch

Cited by 9 publications

References 15 publications

A Comprehensive Survey on Knowledge-Defined Networking

A Comprehensive Survey on Knowledge-Defined Networking

Interleaved Sketch: Toward Consistent Network Telemetry for Commodity Programmable Switches

NAIL: A Network Management Architecture for Deploying Intent into Programmable Switches

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