Composition Approach of P4 Programs in Programmable Networks

• Ricardo Parizotto Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
• Lucas Castanheira Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
• Alberto Schaeffer-Filho Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/sbrc.2019.7420

Abstract

Software-defined networks (SDN) and the emergence of programmable data planes allow greater flexibility for network operation. These technologies are capable of allowing network administrators to reconfigure data and control planes. The ability to reconfigure and program the network on demand offers a number of benefits, in particular enabling it to improve network security mechanisms by using programming capability. However, in addition to promoting a greater degree of flexibility, data plane programmability raises concerns about errors that can create inconsistencies in the most basic function of the network, data forwarding, thereby disrupting previously defined policies. In this paper we present a framework for reliably installing functions in programmable data planes, ensuring that installing such functions preserves the basic forwarding properties. To this end, we employ program composition techniques to merge modular functions into a single aggregate data plane, ensuring that the resulting program is correct after the merge. To show the correctness of our method, we present a case study with a firewall and a monitoring module.

Keywords: Software Defined Networks, Programmable Data Planes, P4, Composition

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