Progress in programmable network data plane

Abstract

Network data plane performs packet processing and forwarding, which is one of the core factors determining the network performance.High bandwidth, low latency and rapid evolution of the network infrastructure require building an efficient and programmable network data plane.The packet processing and forwarding model was firstly introduced, and on this basis, the challenges of the network data plane in the performance and programmability were outlined.Then the basic ideas and core technology progress were elaborated to deal with the above challenges by analyzing the theory of packet processing algorithms and hardware-software codesign implementations.Finally, the trend and technical route of constructing an efficient programmable data plane were discussed.

Keywords

• programmable network data plane;hardware-software codesign;packet processing;in-network computing