Using P4 to enable scalable intents in software defined networks

Lewis, Benjamin; Fawcett, Lyndon; Broadbent, Matthew; Race, Nicholas

Abstract

When designing Software Defined Networks (SDNs), there is a risk that the additional abstractions available can result in reduced scalability and performance. One such abstraction, intents, are a way in which network administrators can express policies rather than having to define specific forwarding rules. This provides a benefit to administrators in allowing automatic network reconfiguration and fault tolerance. In this paper, we highlight the performance overheads associated with the intents framework from a popular SDN controller, ONOS. We propose a novel prototype that leverages source-based routing and programmable data planes using P4 in order to reduce the overheads of intent-based forwarding.

Citation

Lewis, B., Fawcett, L., Broadbent, M., & Race, N. (2018). Using P4 to enable scalable intents in software defined networks. In 2018 IEEE 26th International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP) (442-443). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICNP.2018.00064

• Conference Name: 2018 IEEE 26th International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP)
• Conference Location: Cambridge, UK
• Start Date: Sep 25, 2018
• End Date: Sep 27, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Nov 8, 2018
• Publication Date: 2018
• Deposit Date: Mar 9, 2022
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Pages: 442-443
• Series ISSN: 1092-1648
• Book Title: 2018 IEEE 26th International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICNP.2018.00064
• Keywords: ONOS, OpenFlow, Intents, SDN, p4lang
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2844035