P4CGO: Control Plane Guided P4 Program Optimization
Chenan Wen, Zhuocong Li, Syed Usman Jafri, Xiaokang Qiu, Sanjay Rao · 2024
Software-defined networking (SDN) in conjunction with programmable switches revolutionizes network management, yet crafting optimal switch configurations remains complex. Traditional P4 optimizations rely on data plane level tuning. In this paper, we argue an essential piece for such optimizations is the control plane itself. We present P4CGO, a P4 compilation framework which focuses on realizing specifications based on control policies. P4CGO leverages user-defined objective functions and control plane policies to guide P4 program optimization through table merging and splitting. We have prototyped P4CGO and applied it solving real-world policy optimization problems.