Towards Practical Programmable Packets

Recent research in active networking has motivated the use o f programmable, oractive, packets in which a traditional packet header is replaced by a program that controls a packet’s actions in t he network. Despite the popularity of this idea in the active netwo rking community, it has not taken hold in general. We claim that thi s is because the current active packet systems are not sufficient ly practical. Our goal is to consider why current systems are not practical and to propose directions that will facilitate movement towards practical programmable packets. To this end, we first establ i h a framework that defines what it means to be “practical”. Next, we look at the existing “first-generation” active packet syste ms, paying particular regard to the key aspects of our framework. This s urvey is one of the major contributions of this paper. Finally, we d iscuss the overall lessons we draw from the first generation systems and present a view of what “second-generation” systems should c onsist of. We illustrate our views on second-generation systems by using SNAP (Safe Networking with Active Packets), a second-gener ation system we are currently exploring.

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