A self-adaptive programming mechanism for reconfigurable parsing and processing

In this paper, we present a self-adaptive programming mechanism (SAP) that targets programming hardware devices of reconfigurable parsing and processing. The SAP programming system locates in software of network data plane and has three features: (1) programmable packet parsing: the packet header format can be customized and new header type can be added; (2) reconfigurable packet processing: the match fields to be handled in each match table can be specified; (3) function-adaptive control: any function control systems can determine the packet processing flow independently without the need of knowing the specifics of the underlying hardware. Finally, we implement a prototype on NetFPGA-10G together with two representative function control systems (router and OpenFlow switch) to demonstrate how SAP works. We believe the data plane of reconfigurable parsing and processing will lead to future switches that provide greater flexibility, and unlock the potential of network function innovation.