Abstract

In this paper, we discuss our work on an active network architecture in which passive packets are replaced with active capsules --- encapsulated program fragments that are executed at each switch they traverse. This approach allows application-specific processing to be injected into the network. The accessibility of computation and storage "within" the network provides a substrate that can be tailored to build global applications, including those that invoke customized multicast and merge processing. We describe an extension to the IP options mechanism that supports the embedding of program fragments in datagrams and the evaluation of these fragments as they traverse the Internet. The active option provides a generic approach to the extension of the IP network service. 1 Active Networks Traditional data networks passively transport bits from one end system to another. Ideally, the user data is transferred opaquely, with the role of computation within such networks being extremely limi...

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