Optimizing Data Plane Programs for the Network

Abstract

With the move of Software-defined networking from fixed to programmable data planes, network functions are written with P4 or eBPF for targets such as programmable switches, CPU based flow processors [5] and commodity CPUs [7]. These data plane programs are, however, limited in per-packet time budget [3] (e.g., 67.2 ns at 10GbE) and program size, making program optimization imperative [6]. Existing approaches focus on optimizing the distribution of flow rules in fixed data planes [4] or they are limited to a single switch [2]. We see great potential in integrating the network topology into program optimization.