Abstract
Abstract The networking industry is currently undergoing a steady trend of softwarization. Yet, network engineers suffer from the lack of software development tools that support programming of new protocols. We are creating a cost analysis tool for the P4 programming language, that automatically verifies whether the developed program meets soft deadline requirements imposed by the network. In this paper, we present an approach to estimate the average execution time of P4 program based on control flow graphs. Our approach takes into consideration that many of the parts of P4 are implementation-defined: required information can be added in through incremental refinement, while missing information is handled by falling back to less precise defaults. We illustrate application of this approach to a P4 protocol in two case studies: we use it to examine the effect of a compiler optimization in the deparse stage, and to show how it enables cost modelling complex lookup table implementations. Finally, we assess future research tasks to be completed before the tool is ready for real-world usage.
Highlights
We are creating a cost analysis tool for the P4 programming language, that automatically verifies whether the developed program meets soft deadline requirements imposed by the network
We present an approach to estimate the average execution time of P4 program based on control flow graphs
Our approach takes into consideration that many of the parts of P4 are implementation-defined: required information can be added in through incremental refinement, while missing information is handled by falling back to less precise defaults
Summary
Network scalability is becoming more and more important than raw throughput numbers. This has resulted in the ongoing industry trend known as network softwarization: flexible software nodes and network virtualization are preferred over rigid hard-. Our current work is part of our ongoing effort to tackle this problem: our intention is to develop a cost analysis tool for P4. In our plans, this tool will make it possible to estimate the execution time (and possibly other factors, such as energy efficiency) of a P4 program, enabling verification of soft network deadlines and other requirements.
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