Service-based Forwarding via Programmable Dataplanes

Abstract

Access to networks for purposes of executing remote services has become a dominant form of communication, while virtualization has enabled the flexible and fast deployment of those services across distributed locations. This seems at odds with the design that drives the network layer of the Internet. Our paper presents an approach to flexibly deploy a network layer solution for optimizing service access within a single domain, while retaining full connectivity to Internet-based services. We discuss design considerations and the resulting design. We analyze expected gains from our solution.