Implementation and evaluation of active internetwork system using Stream Code based active network

Abstract

The Internet has become an infrastructure for the global communication, and the reason of the success is the simplicity of the underlying technologies, i.e., a simple connectionless data transfer mechanism. However, this simple mechanism does no extend the functionality of the network, and does not satisfy various new user requirements. In order to realize a flexible and simple internetwork, the active network, which makes network nodes programmable, is very promising. We propose an active internetwork system using the Stream Code based active network. Here, every packet contains a program written in assembly based Stream Code specifying how the packet is handled, and a network node only has the mechanism to execute Stream Code. We have developed the execution environment of Stream Code called the SC Engine. As a result, we have realized a flexible active internetwork system consisting of multiple network nodes supporting SC Engines and measured its performance. Furthermore, in order to demonstrate that this active internetwork system can work as a real network, we also developed a complicated mechanism of dynamic routing protocol that is similar to Open Shortest Path First (OSPF). In the implementation of the routing protocol, we especially focused on how a routing protocol similar to OSPF is realized using Stream Code. This paper describes those results.