OpenBox: Enabling Innovation in Middlebox Applications

Contemporary networks contain many different kind of middleboxes that perform variety of advanced network functions. Currently, a special box is tailored to provide each such function. These special boxes are usually proprietary, and operators control over them is limited to the set of capabilities defined by the provider of each box. Nonetheless, many middleboxes perform very similar tasks. In this paper we present OpenBox: a logically-centralized framework that makes advanced packet processing and monitoring easier, faster, more scalable, flexible, and innovative. OpenBox decouples the control plane of middleboxes from their data plane, and unifies the data plane of multiple middlebox applications using entities called service instances. On top of the centralized control plane everyone can develop OpenBox applications. An OpenBox application, formerly implemented as a separate middlebox, instructs the data plane how to process packets in order to achieve its intended function. OpenBox service instances reside in data plane and process packets according to policies defined by the control plane. They can be implemented in software or use specialized hardware.