NAGA: A Deterministic Programmable Network With Update Timing Guarantees

Abstract

There is no system yet that provides predictable data plane and control plane operations in programmable networks. However, both predictable data plane and control plane operations are needed, e.g., in industrial networks. Particularly there, the operation of the network needs to be planned and, hence, relies on network operations that are deterministic and executed in a timely manner. To fill this gap, this paper proposes our system named NAGA, which provides data plane deterministic guarantees along with consistent and timely network updates in programmable networks. In order to not rely on specialized hardware, NAGA uses widely-available hardware capabilities such as priority queuing and label-based forwarding. Whereas the real implementation of NAGA in a P4-based testbed demonstrates that applications receive guaranteed performance in terms of latency and data rate, simulation studies show the ability of NAGA to be even deployed in large scale scenarios beyond industrial networks, such as wide area and data center networks.