The design and implementation of a high-performance active network node

A capsule-oriented active network transports capsules containing code to be executed on the network nodes that they pass through. This approach makes networks more extensible by allowing new networking protocols to be deployed and used without any changes to the underlying network infrastructure. This thesis project describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of a high-performance practical active network node that can serve as a testbed for research into active network performance and resource management issues. Nodes provide resources to executing capsules containing Intel ix86 object code. Although the current implementation does not yet provide safety or interoperability, the results of experiments performed on the system implemented for this thesis indicate that an active network architecture may be able to provide signi cant exibility while only incurring a small performance overhead relative to traditional networks. Thesis Supervisor: M. Frans Kaashoek Title: Associate Professor