2014/05/01 by Haoyu Song, Song, Haoyu, Jun Gong +5
Computer Science · Engineering · #Advanced Memory and Neural Computing #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Networking and Internet Architecture (cs.NI) #Radiation Effects in Electronics #Software-Defined Networks and 5G #cs.NI
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1405.0060
arxiv created 2014/05/01 · openalex publication_date 2014/05/01 · arxiv updated 2014/05/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In many real-world OpenFlow-based SDN deployments, the ability to program heterogeneous forwarding elements built with different forwarding architectures is a desirable capability. In this paper, we discuss a data plane programming framework suitable for a flexible and protocol-oblivious data plane and show how OpenFlow can evolve to provide a generic interface for platform-independent programming and platform-specific compiling. We also show how an abstract instruction set can play a pivotal role to support different programming styles mapping to different forwarding chip architectures. As an example, we compare the compiler-mode and interpreter-mode implementations for an NPU-based forwarding element and conclude that the compiler-mode implementation can achieve a performance similar to that of a conventional non-SDN implementation. Built upon our protocol-oblivious forwarding (POF) vision, this work presents our continuous efforts to complete the ecosystem and pave the SDN evolving path. The programming framework could be considered as a proposal for the OpenFlow 2.0 standard.