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Millions of little minions: using packets for low latency network programming and visibility

Published: 17 August 2014 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents a practical approach to rapidly introducing new dataplane functionality into networks: End-hosts embed tiny programs into packets to actively query and manipulate a network's internal state. We show how this "tiny packet program" (TPP) interface gives end-hosts unprecedented visibility into network behavior, enabling them to work with the network to achieve a desired functionality. Our design leverages what each component does best: (a) switches forward and execute tiny packet programs (at most 5~instructions) in-band at line rate, and (b) end-hosts perform arbitrary (and easily updated) computation on network state. By implementing three different research proposals, we show that TPPs are useful. Using a hardware prototype on a NetFPGA, we show our design is feasible at a reasonable cost.

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      Published In

      cover image ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review
      ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review  Volume 44, Issue 4
      SIGCOMM'14
      October 2014
      672 pages
      ISSN:0146-4833
      DOI:10.1145/2740070
      Issue’s Table of Contents
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 17 August 2014
      Published in SIGCOMM-CCR Volume 44, Issue 4

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      Author Tags

      1. active networks
      2. design
      3. measurement
      4. performance

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      • (2024)RD-Probe: Scalable Monitoring With Sufficient Coverage In Complex Datacenter NetworksProceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2024 Conference10.1145/3651890.3672256(258-273)Online publication date: 4-Aug-2024
      • (2024)Unleashing Dynamic Pipeline Reconfiguration of P4 Switches for Efficient Network MonitoringIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2024.337753821:3(3482-3497)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
      • (2024)Hermes: Low-Overhead Inter-Switch Coordination in Network-Wide Data Plane Program DeploymentIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2024.336132432:4(2842-2857)Online publication date: Aug-2024
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      • (2023)P4 and NetFPGA-Based Secure In-Network Computing Architecture for AI-Enabled Industrial Internet of ThingsIEEE Internet of Things Journal10.1109/JIOT.2021.312586210:4(2979-2994)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2023
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