Network function extensibility in software at round-trip timescales
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Networking researchers and practitioners strive for flexible network control to rapidly introduce new functionality into production networks. In this dissertation, we present a practical approach to rapidly introduce new dataplane functionality into privately owned networks such as data centers, in which both end-hosts and the network are under one administrative entity. At a high level, our approach partitions the functionality between end-hosts and the network. This separation of concerns between end-hosts and the network is useful in practice: It decouples network function extensibility from network hardware extensibility. End-hosts can deploy new network functions without having to wait for new network hardware. In the first part of the dissertation, we present a new interface between end-hosts and the network. End-hosts embed tiny programs into packets that actively query and manip- ulate a network's internal state, and execute directly in the dataplane. We then show how this single "tiny packet program" (TPP) interface gives end-hosts unprecedented visibility into network state, enabling them to work with the network with low-latency and at high throughput to realize many desirable dataplane tasks such as congestion control, measure- ment, and troubleshooting. This design requires changes both at network switches and at end-hosts, but leverages what each component does best: (a) the ASIC forwards packets at line rate, while executing a tiny program embedded within the packet (if any); and (b) end- hosts send a sequence of TPPs to query network state, and perform arbitary computation on the queried state in software. We then show that the TPP design is feasible in hardware, at a reasonable cost. We also show that TPPs are useful by implementing three different research proposals. We also outline seven other research projects that can be implemented using TPPs, highlighting that TPPs are generic, and present an architecture in which they can be made secure. In the second and third parts of this dissertation, we show how limited visibility at the access links between the network and end-hosts is sufficient to implement a quality of ser- vice network function completely at end-hosts, without requiring any changes to network switches.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Jeyakumar, Vimalkumar |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Computer Science. |
| Primary advisor | Mazières, David (David Folkman), 1972- |
| Thesis advisor | Mazières, David (David Folkman), 1972- |
| Thesis advisor | McKeown, Nick |
| Thesis advisor | Prabhakar, Balaji, 1967- |
| Advisor | McKeown, Nick |
| Advisor | Prabhakar, Balaji, 1967- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Vimalkumar Jeyakumar. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Computer Science. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2014. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2014 by Vimalkumar Jeyakumar
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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