Distributed Implementation of Coordinated, Network-Wide Policies and Protocols with FlowFlex
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Author(s)
Mundada, Yogesh
Sherwood, Rob
Feamster, Nick
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Abstract
The increasing programmability of network devices gives protocol designers and network operators considerably
more flexibility in defining custom protocols and traffic
processing functions. Today, network operators and protocol designers have the option of either operating at
flow-level granularity, which offers coordinated control;
or packet-level granularity, which offers flexibility, but
not coordinated control. Today’s network programming
paradigms force operators to choose between the fine-grained
control and expressiveness of packet processing
and the coordination of flow processing, which makes it
difficult to quickly realize a distributed implementation
of a global, network-wide policy. Designers must also
choose between the flexibility of hardware-based solutions
and the fast development cycles offered by software.
This paper proposes a system called FlowFlex that offers
network designers the best of both worlds: with FlowFlex,
operators can quickly design, implement, and deploy network
systems and protocols that offer fast, distributed, implementations
that require coordinated control and fine-grained
operations on packets. We present the design and implementation of the FlowFlex framework and show how
it can improve both expressiveness and efficiency for three
real-world networking applications.
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Date
2010
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Text
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Technical Report