A Programmable Router Architecture Supporting Control Plane Extensibility
Abstract
The Internet is evolving from an infrastructure that provides basic communication services into a more sophisticated infrastructure that supports a wide range of electronic services such as virtual reality games and rich multimedia retrieval services. However, this evolution is happening only slowly, in part because the communication infrastructure is too rigid. In this report, we present a programmable router architecture, in which the control plane functionality of the router can be extended dynamically through the use of delegates. Delegates can control the behavior of the router through a well defined router control interface, allowing service providers and third-party software vendors to implement customized traffic control policies or protocols. We describe Darwin, a system that implements such an architecture. We emphasize the runtime environment the system provides for delegate execution and the programming interface the system exports to support delegates. We demonstrate the advantages of using this system by presenting several delegate examples.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2000
- Accession Number
- ADA377107
Entities
People
- Allan Fisher
- Eduardo Takahashi
- Jun Gao
- Peter Steenkiste
Organizations
- Carnegie Mellon University