Software-Defined Protocol Independent Parser based on FPGA
Miao Lixin, Liu Qingrang, Xin Wang · 2019
with the boom of information technology, heterogeneous networks with various functions emerge in endlessly, heterogeneous fusion network has become the inevitable trend of the development of the next generation network. To realize communication between heterogeneous networks, network forwarding equipment is essential. Traditional forwarding devices only support fixed protocol configuration and lack scalability, so they cannot support new network protocols. In view of this situation, this paper proposes a software defined protocol independent parser based on FPGA. The software defines the parsing process, giving the parser flexible and programmable features. It can analy multiple protocol packets and extract key information needed for protocol conversion without changing hardware devices. We implemented the parser through a high-performance FPGA platform and evaluated hardware resource overhead and performance. Experimental results show that our parser can perform protocol parsing operations that are protocol independent. Although the throughput is slightly lower than other parsers, there is less resource overhead.