Towards internet innovation: Software defined data plane

Abstract

In order to support new network architectures, Openflow implements flows forwarding based on multiple tables via pipelines, which increases the difficulty of the implementation. With the advent of multi-core CPU, a software defined data plane, LabelCast, is proposed, which characterizes the ability of forwarding operations and processing services through the Label table and Cast table. Forwarding layer lookups based on fixed-length labels and schedules packets processing, including light-semantics action instructions of general process, which is easy to be realized and is denoted by the Label table, and protocol semantics or status-related service of special process, which could be enriched via opening resources within network devices and is arranged by the Cast table. LabelCast supplies a reliable and programmable data plane, and could load multiple network architectures, so as to facilitate Internet innovation. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.