P4 Weaver: Supporting Modular and Incremental Programming in P4

In this paper, we introduce P4 Weaver as an approach towards bringing modularity into the P4 language. P4 Weaver is designed to merge new data plane features into a base program in a principled and controlled way, so as to preserve the reliability of the switch. We also present an architecture for an integrated development environment that supports modular P4 programming while also safeguarding the intellectual property of the vendor code. We demonstrate the utility of P4 Weaver by adding three popular but non-trivial protocols to a P4 switch. We show that modularity is indeed beneficial and that P4 Weaver supports modularity efficiently and reliably.