An Programmable Control Plane Framework by Using Behavior Tree
Gao Xianming, Feng Tao, Jinhua Du, Shanqing Jiang · 2021
Traditional control plane uses finite state machine to control processing logic and to run operating logic. When extending protocol states, it is necessary to re-design control plane and re-develop software application. In order to achieve programmable control plane, we propose a Logic Independent Control Plane Architecture (LICPA for short), which adopts behavior tree to separate processing logic and operating logic. It introduces action template including action, transfer condition and effect to describe the processing logic of control plane. Meanwhile, it automatically establishes BT tree of operating logic by traversing the action template, and periodically traverses BT tree to run the operating logic of control plane. When modifying protocol state, LICPA just modifies the action template, and immediately operates the modified logic, which does not need to re-design and re-develop the control plane. The experimental results show that LICPA has obvious advantages in modularity and scalability, which provides a practical way for the programming control plane.