A Globally-Applied Component Model for Programmable Networking

We argue that currently developed software frameworks for active and programmable networking do not provide a truly generic approach to the development, deployment, and management of services. Furthermore, current systems are typically targeted at a particular level of the programmable networking design space (e.g. at low-level, in-band, packet forwarding; or at high-level signaling) and/or at a particular hardware platform. In addition, most existing approaches, while they may address the initial configuration of systems, neglect dynamic reconfiguration of running systems. In this paper we present a reflective component-based approach that addresses these limitations. We show how our approach is applicable at all system levels, can be applied in heterogeneous hardware environments (specifically, commodity PC-based routers and network processor-based routers), and supports both initial configuration and dynamic reconfiguration. We especially address the latter point; we show the viability of our approach in (re)configuring services on an Intel IXP1200 network processor-based router.