The Experts below are selected from a list of 15069 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Kurt Rothermel - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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infep lightweight virtualization of distributed control on white box Networking Hardware
Conference on Network and Service Management, 2017Co-Authors: Thomas Kohler, Frank Durr, Christian Baumlisberger, Kurt RothermelAbstract:Recent developments in Networking Hardware and software-defined Networking have enabled full distribution of network control to reduce control latency and increase reliability. However, both, Hardware and software of current white-box Networking Hardware are highly heterogeneous, which limits the deployment and operation of switch-local control applications. Furthermore, switch-local control raises yet unconsidered security concerns. In this paper, we present our concept of in-forward-element processing, which leverages the open access to the control plane of white-box Networking Hardware to deploy control logic directly onto switches. We combine local control applications with lightweight virtualization to cope with Networking Hardware heterogeneity and to achieve required isolation properties and ease of management. Beyond distributed network control, we show this scheme is also beneficial for implementing switch-local virtual network functions (NFV), processing packets. Highlighting the practicability of the concepts, we provide an overview of the current white-box Networking Hardware and software landscape and their compatibility with lightweight virtualization technologies. To this end, we perform an empirical evaluation of NOS-virtualization combinations on such Hardware and compare the results with respect to incurring virtualization overhead.
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ZeroSDN: A Highly Flexible and Modular Architecture for Full-Range Network Control Distribution
2017 ACM IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems (ANCS), 2017Co-Authors: Thomas Kohler, Frank Durr, Kurt RothermelAbstract:Recent years have seen an evolution of SDN control plane architectures, starting from simple monolithic controllers, over modular monolithic controllers, to distributed controllers. We observe, however, that today's distributed controllers still exhibit inflexibility with respect to the distribution of control logic. Therefore, we propose a novel architecture of a distributed SDN controller in this paper, providing maximum flexibility with respect to distribution. Our architecture splits control logic into light-weight control modules, called controllets, based on a micro-kernel approach, reducing common controllet functionality to a bare minimum and factoring out all higher-level functionality. Light-weight controllets also allow for pushing control logic onto switches and enable local processing of data plane events to minimize latency and communication overhead. Controllets are interconnected through a message bus supporting the publish/subscribe communication paradigm with specific extensions for content-based OpenFlow message filtering. Publish/subscribe allows for complete decoupling of controllets to further facilitate control plane distribution. We evaluate both, the scalability and performance properties of our architecture, including its deployment on a White Box Networking Hardware switch.
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CNSM - InFEP — Lightweight virtualization of distributed control on white-box Networking Hardware
2017 13th International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM), 2017Co-Authors: Thomas Kohler, Frank Durr, Christian Baumlisberger, Kurt RothermelAbstract:Recent developments in Networking Hardware and software-defined Networking have enabled full distribution of network control to reduce control latency and increase reliability. However, both, Hardware and software of current white-box Networking Hardware are highly heterogeneous, which limits the deployment and operation of switch-local control applications. Furthermore, switch-local control raises yet unconsidered security concerns. In this paper, we present our concept of in-forward-element processing, which leverages the open access to the control plane of white-box Networking Hardware to deploy control logic directly onto switches. We combine local control applications with lightweight virtualization to cope with Networking Hardware heterogeneity and to achieve required isolation properties and ease of management. Beyond distributed network control, we show this scheme is also beneficial for implementing switch-local virtual network functions (NFV), processing packets. Highlighting the practicability of the concepts, we provide an overview of the current white-box Networking Hardware and software landscape and their compatibility with lightweight virtualization technologies. To this end, we perform an empirical evaluation of NOS-virtualization combinations on such Hardware and compare the results with respect to incurring virtualization overhead.
Nick Mckeown - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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appswitch application layer load balancing within a software switch
Proceedings of the First Asia-Pacific Workshop on Networking, 2017Co-Authors: Eyal Cidon, Sean Choi, Sachin Katti, Nick MckeownAbstract:With the increase in adoption of SDN, programmable switches are becoming an attractive mechanism for enabling network operators to configure protocols without replacing Networking Hardware. This paper argues that the functionality of programmable switches can be extended beyond network operations to the application layer, in order to achieve significant end-to-end application performance improvements. To illustrate the potential of this new concept, we develop AppSwitch, a packet switch that also performs load balancing for key-value storage systems. Unlike existing key-value load balancers, which require each request to send an extra message to a proxy server, AppSwitch requires only a single message from the key-value client to the server. This results in a 2x reduction in end-to-end average latency and 2x throughput improvement. We implemented AppSwitch on PISCES, a P4 programmable version of Open vSwitch. Finally, we demonstrate that AppSwitch can be deployed transparently, without any changes to the key-value clients and servers.
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PRESTO - NetFPGA: reusable router architecture for experimental research
Proceedings of the ACM workshop on Programmable routers for extensible services of tomorrow - PRESTO '08, 2008Co-Authors: Jad Naous, Glen Gibb, Sara Bolouki, Nick MckeownAbstract:Our goal is to enable fast prototyping of Networking Hardware (e.g. modified Ethernet switches and IP routers) for teaching and research. To this end, we built and made available the NetFPGA platform. Starting from open-source reference designs, students and researchers create their designs in Verilog, and then download them to the NetFPGA board where they can process packets at line-rate for 4-ports of 1GE. The board is becoming widely used for teaching and research, and so it has become important to make it easy to re-use modules and designs. We have created a standard interface between modules, making it easier to plug modules together in pipelines, and to create new re-usable designs. In this paper we describe our modular design, and how we have used it to build several systems, including our IP router reference design and some extensions to it.
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reconfigurable Networking Hardware a classroom tool
High Performance Interconnects, 2005Co-Authors: Martin Casado, Gregory Watson, Nick MckeownAbstract:We present an educational platform for teaching the design, debugging and deployment of real Networking equipment in the operational Internet. The emphasis of our work is on teaching and, therefore, on providing an environment that is flexible, robust, low cost and easy to use. The platform is built around 'NetFPGAs'-custom boards containing eight Ethernet ports and two FPGAs. NetFPGA boards, when used with VNS (Virtual Network System-another tool we have developed), can be integrated into dynamically configurable network topologies reachable from the Internet. VNS enables a user-space process running on any remote computer to function as a system controller for the NetFPGA boards. NetFPGA and VNS are used at Stanford in a graduate level Networking course to teach router implementation in Hardware and software.
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teaching Networking Hardware
Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2005Co-Authors: Martin Casado, Gregory Watson, Nick MckeownAbstract:We present our experience with the design and teaching of a graduate-level Networking Hardware course in which students design and build an Internet router. Each team of two students (one proficient in Hardware and one proficient in software) design and develop a fully functional router that routes live Internet traffic and inter-operates with other students' routers via a simple routing protocol. Hardware is designed in Verilog using an industry-standard design flow on a specially designed platform, called NetFPGA. Software is written in user-space using a high-level language. Software and Hardware are combined and tested using real network traffic over arbitrary private topologies using a custom tool, called VNS. Our approach is distinguished in that both Hardware and software can be designed, tested and deployed remotely over the Internet. Our goal is to give students experience in the design of complex Networking systems. In our initial course offering in Spring 2004, all teams successfully implemented fully functional routers in less than ten weeks. We will pilot courses outside of Stanford using the remote teaching infrastructure presented in this paper.
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ITiCSE - Teaching Networking Hardware
Proceedings of the 10th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education - ITiCSE '05, 2005Co-Authors: Martin Casado, Gregory Watson, Nick MckeownAbstract:We present our experience with the design and teaching of a graduate-level Networking Hardware course in which students design and build an Internet router. Each team of two students (one proficient in Hardware and one proficient in software) design and develop a fully functional router that routes live Internet traffic and inter-operates with other students' routers via a simple routing protocol. Hardware is designed in Verilog using an industry-standard design flow on a specially designed platform, called NetFPGA. Software is written in user-space using a high-level language. Software and Hardware are combined and tested using real network traffic over arbitrary private topologies using a custom tool, called VNS. Our approach is distinguished in that both Hardware and software can be designed, tested and deployed remotely over the Internet. Our goal is to give students experience in the design of complex Networking systems. In our initial course offering in Spring 2004, all teams successfully implemented fully functional routers in less than ten weeks. We will pilot courses outside of Stanford using the remote teaching infrastructure presented in this paper.
Thomas Kohler - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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infep lightweight virtualization of distributed control on white box Networking Hardware
Conference on Network and Service Management, 2017Co-Authors: Thomas Kohler, Frank Durr, Christian Baumlisberger, Kurt RothermelAbstract:Recent developments in Networking Hardware and software-defined Networking have enabled full distribution of network control to reduce control latency and increase reliability. However, both, Hardware and software of current white-box Networking Hardware are highly heterogeneous, which limits the deployment and operation of switch-local control applications. Furthermore, switch-local control raises yet unconsidered security concerns. In this paper, we present our concept of in-forward-element processing, which leverages the open access to the control plane of white-box Networking Hardware to deploy control logic directly onto switches. We combine local control applications with lightweight virtualization to cope with Networking Hardware heterogeneity and to achieve required isolation properties and ease of management. Beyond distributed network control, we show this scheme is also beneficial for implementing switch-local virtual network functions (NFV), processing packets. Highlighting the practicability of the concepts, we provide an overview of the current white-box Networking Hardware and software landscape and their compatibility with lightweight virtualization technologies. To this end, we perform an empirical evaluation of NOS-virtualization combinations on such Hardware and compare the results with respect to incurring virtualization overhead.
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ZeroSDN: A Highly Flexible and Modular Architecture for Full-Range Network Control Distribution
2017 ACM IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems (ANCS), 2017Co-Authors: Thomas Kohler, Frank Durr, Kurt RothermelAbstract:Recent years have seen an evolution of SDN control plane architectures, starting from simple monolithic controllers, over modular monolithic controllers, to distributed controllers. We observe, however, that today's distributed controllers still exhibit inflexibility with respect to the distribution of control logic. Therefore, we propose a novel architecture of a distributed SDN controller in this paper, providing maximum flexibility with respect to distribution. Our architecture splits control logic into light-weight control modules, called controllets, based on a micro-kernel approach, reducing common controllet functionality to a bare minimum and factoring out all higher-level functionality. Light-weight controllets also allow for pushing control logic onto switches and enable local processing of data plane events to minimize latency and communication overhead. Controllets are interconnected through a message bus supporting the publish/subscribe communication paradigm with specific extensions for content-based OpenFlow message filtering. Publish/subscribe allows for complete decoupling of controllets to further facilitate control plane distribution. We evaluate both, the scalability and performance properties of our architecture, including its deployment on a White Box Networking Hardware switch.
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CNSM - InFEP — Lightweight virtualization of distributed control on white-box Networking Hardware
2017 13th International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM), 2017Co-Authors: Thomas Kohler, Frank Durr, Christian Baumlisberger, Kurt RothermelAbstract:Recent developments in Networking Hardware and software-defined Networking have enabled full distribution of network control to reduce control latency and increase reliability. However, both, Hardware and software of current white-box Networking Hardware are highly heterogeneous, which limits the deployment and operation of switch-local control applications. Furthermore, switch-local control raises yet unconsidered security concerns. In this paper, we present our concept of in-forward-element processing, which leverages the open access to the control plane of white-box Networking Hardware to deploy control logic directly onto switches. We combine local control applications with lightweight virtualization to cope with Networking Hardware heterogeneity and to achieve required isolation properties and ease of management. Beyond distributed network control, we show this scheme is also beneficial for implementing switch-local virtual network functions (NFV), processing packets. Highlighting the practicability of the concepts, we provide an overview of the current white-box Networking Hardware and software landscape and their compatibility with lightweight virtualization technologies. To this end, we perform an empirical evaluation of NOS-virtualization combinations on such Hardware and compare the results with respect to incurring virtualization overhead.
David E Taylor - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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control and configuration software for a reconfigurable Networking Hardware platform
Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines, 2002Co-Authors: Todd Sproull, John W. Lockwood, David E TaylorAbstract:A suite of tools called NCHARGE (Networked Configurable Hardware Administrator for Reconfiguration and Governing via End-systems) has been developed to simplify the co-design of Hardware and software components that process packets within a network of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). A key feature of NCHARGE is that it provides a high-performance packet interface to Hardware and standard Application Programming Interface (API) between software and reprogrammable Hardware modules. Using this API, multiple software processes can communicate to one or more Hardware modules using standard TCP/IP sockets. NCHARGE also provides a Web-Based User Interface to simplify the configuration and control of an entire network switch that contains several software and Hardware modules.
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FCCM - Control and configuration software for a reconfigurable Networking Hardware platform
Proceedings. 10th Annual IEEE Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines, 1Co-Authors: Todd Sproull, John W. Lockwood, David E TaylorAbstract:A suite of tools called NCHARGE (Networked Configurable Hardware Administrator for Reconfiguration and Governing via End-systems) has been developed to simplify the co-design of Hardware and software components that process packets within a network of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). A key feature of NCHARGE is that it provides a high-performance packet interface to Hardware and standard Application Programming Interface (API) between software and reprogrammable Hardware modules. Using this API, multiple software processes can communicate to one or more Hardware modules using standard TCP/IP sockets. NCHARGE also provides a Web-Based User Interface to simplify the configuration and control of an entire network switch that contains several software and Hardware modules.
Amin Vahdat - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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chimpp a click based programming and simulation environment for reconfigurable Networking Hardware
Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems, 2010Co-Authors: Erik Rubow, Rick Mcgeer, Jeffrey C Mogul, Amin VahdatAbstract:Reconfigurable network Hardware makes it easier to experiment with and prototype high-speed Networking systems. However, these devices are still relatively hard to program; for example, requiring users to develop in Verilog or VHDL. Further, these devices are commonly designed to work with software on a host computer, requiring the co-development of these Hardware and software components. We address this situation with Chimpp, a development environment for reconfigurable network Hardware, modeled on the popular Click modular router system. Chimpp employs a modular approach to designing Hardware-based packet-processing systems, featuring a simple configuration language similar to that of Click. We demonstrate this development environment by targeting the NetF-PGA platform. Chimpp can be combined with Click itself at the software layer for a highly modular, mixed Hardware and software design framework. We also enable the integrated simulation of the Hardware and software components of a network device together with other network devices using the OMNeT++ network simulator. The goal of Chimpp is to make experimentation easy by providing a toolbox of reusable, modular elements and a way to easily combine them. In contrast with some prior work, Chimpp avoids unnecessary restrictions on module interfaces and design styles. Rather, it is easy to add custom interfaces and to incorporate existing Hardware modules. We describe our design and implementation of Chimpp, and provide initial evaluations showing how Chimpp makes it easier to implement, simulate, and modify a variety of packet-processing systems on the NetFPGA platform.
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ANCS - Chimpp: a click-based programming and simulation environment for reconfigurable Networking Hardware
Proceedings of the 6th ACM IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems - ANCS '10, 2010Co-Authors: Erik Rubow, Rick Mcgeer, Jeffrey C Mogul, Amin VahdatAbstract:Reconfigurable network Hardware makes it easier to experiment with and prototype high-speed Networking systems. However, these devices are still relatively hard to program; for example, requiring users to develop in Verilog or VHDL. Further, these devices are commonly designed to work with software on a host computer, requiring the co-development of these Hardware and software components. We address this situation with Chimpp, a development environment for reconfigurable network Hardware, modeled on the popular Click modular router system. Chimpp employs a modular approach to designing Hardware-based packet-processing systems, featuring a simple configuration language similar to that of Click. We demonstrate this development environment by targeting the NetF-PGA platform. Chimpp can be combined with Click itself at the software layer for a highly modular, mixed Hardware and software design framework. We also enable the integrated simulation of the Hardware and software components of a network device together with other network devices using the OMNeT++ network simulator. The goal of Chimpp is to make experimentation easy by providing a toolbox of reusable, modular elements and a way to easily combine them. In contrast with some prior work, Chimpp avoids unnecessary restrictions on module interfaces and design styles. Rather, it is easy to add custom interfaces and to incorporate existing Hardware modules. We describe our design and implementation of Chimpp, and provide initial evaluations showing how Chimpp makes it easier to implement, simulate, and modify a variety of packet-processing systems on the NetFPGA platform.