Closed-loop Network Automation with Generic Programmable Data Plane (G-PDP) : (Invited Paper)
Shaofei Tang, Hui Liang, Min Wang, Tingyu Li, Zuqing Zhu · 2021
In this work, we try to combine software-defined networking (SDN), in-band network telemetry (INT), and data analytics to realize a novel closed-loop network automation system. To architect the data plane, we jointly consider P4-based and protocol-oblivious forwarding (POF) based programmable data plane switches (PDP-SWs) to build a generic programmable data plane (G-PDP), such that the two types of PDP-SWs can benefit each other mutually to overcome their own drawbacks. In the control plane, we expand ONOS to ensure that it can effectively manage the PDP-SWs in the G-PDP. We also design and implement data analyzers (DAs) in its data analytics subsystem, and deploy them distributedly in the G-PDP to alleviate the burden of data processing in the control plane. Our proposal is demonstrated experimentally with a network system prototype that consists of six PDP-SWs, and the results confirm that it can realize closed-loop network automation effectively and balance the tradeoff between flexibility and performance properly.