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A compiler and run-time system for network programming languages (2012)
| Venue: | In Principles of Programming Languages (POPL |
| Citations: | 59 - 18 self |
BibTeX
@INPROCEEDINGS{Foster12acompiler,
author = {Nate Foster and Rob Harrison and David Walker},
title = {A compiler and run-time system for network programming languages},
booktitle = {In Principles of Programming Languages (POPL},
year = {2012}
}
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Abstract
Software-defined networks (SDNs) are a new implementation architecture in which a controller machine manages a distributed collection of switches, by instructing them to install or uninstall packet-forwarding rules and report traffic statistics. The recently formed Open Networking Consortium, whose members include Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, and others, hopes to use this architecture to transform the way enterprise and data center networks are implemented. But to do this, they need novel programming languages to help them craft network-wide algorithms for routing, energy-efficient network management, dynamic access control, traffic monitoring, and other applications. In this paper, we define a high-level language, called NCore, for expressing packet-forwarding policies and traffic-statistics queries. The language is designed to be simple, expressive, and compositional. We define a formal semantics for NCore and show how to compile it to a distributed switch-controller architecture. To ensure that a majority of packets are processed efficiently on switches, we develop a new compilation technique called reactive specialization that generalizes, improves on, and automates the simple (but inefficient) manual techniques commonly used to program SDNs. Reactive specialization and the other compilation techniques we develop are highly generic, assuming only that the packet-matching capabilities available on switches satisfy some basic algebraic laws. This generality makes our technology applicable to all current switches we are aware of, including switches that implement the popular OpenFlow protocol. Overall, this paper delivers a design for a high-level network programming language; a novel, general-purpose compilation algorithm based on reactive specialization; a run-time system based on a SDN architecture; the first formal semantics and proofs of correctness in this domain; and an implementation and evaluation that demonstrates the benefits over the current state-of-the-art. 1.
Keyphrases
run-time system reactive specialization network programming language way enterprise data center network energy-efficient network management compilation technique network-wide algorithm current state-of-the-art traffic-statistics query traffic monitoring switch-controller architecture high-level network distributed collection current switch general-purpose compilation algorithm formal semantics packet-matching capability packet-forwarding policy new implementation architecture program sdns manual technique dynamic access control software-defined network high-level language novel programming language controller machine popular openflow protocol new compilation technique basic algebraic law packet-forwarding rule sdn architecture open networking consortium first formal semantics report traffic statistic
