Title: Enhancing Capabilities of Software Defined Network Data Plane

Bilal Anwer

School of Computer Science

College of Computing

Georgia Institute of Technology

Date: Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Time: 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Location: Klaus Room 3100

Committee:

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Prof. Nick Feamster, (Advisor, School of Computer Science, Georgia Tech and Department of Computer Science, Princeton University) Prof. Ellen Zegura, (School of Computer Science, Georgia Tech) Prof. Ling Liu, (School of Computer Science, Georgia Tech) Prof. Theophilus Benson, (Department of Computer Science, Duke University) 

Abstract:

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Enhancement of data-plane functionality is an open problem that has recently got momentum with emergence of Software Defined Networks(SDN).

Addition and programmability of new functions inside the network data-plane to enable high speed, complex data functions with minimum resource utilization, is main focus of this thesis.  In this work, we look at different levels of a network data-plane design and propose data plane enhancements to achieve these goals.

First we focus our attention at the network switch fabric, using hardware and software virtualization we show how hardware and software based switches can be designed to achieve above mentioned goals.  We then present a switch design that can be used to quickly add heterogeneous custom packet processors to a network data-plane. At the end of this thesis we present a programming abstraction and a runtime system that can be used to introduce new network functions inside an SDN data-plane while alleviating the network operator from determining the location and deployment mechanism of these functions.