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Cheap silicon: a myth or reality? picking the right data plane hardware for software defined networking

Published: 16 August 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) promises the vision of more flexible and manageable networks, but requires certain level of programmability in the data plane. Current industry insight holds that programmable network processors are of lower performance than their hard-coded counterparts, such as Ethernet chips. This represents a roadblock to SDN adoption. In this paper we argue that contrast to the common view, the overhead of programmability is relatively low. We also argue that the apparent difference between programmable and hard-coded chips today is not primarily due to programmability itself, but because the internal balance of programmable network processors is tuned to more complex use cases. These arguments are backed with calculations and real-life measurements.

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Cited By

View all
  • (2020)DeepMatchProceedings of the 16th International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies10.1145/3386367.3431290(336-350)Online publication date: 23-Nov-2020
  • (2020)Transition to SDN is HARMLESS: Hybrid Architecture for Migrating Legacy Ethernet Switches to SDNIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2019.295876228:1(275-288)Online publication date: Feb-2020
  • (2018)HARMLESS: Cost-Effective Transitioning to SDN for Small Enterprises2018 IFIP Networking Conference (IFIP Networking) and Workshops10.23919/IFIPNetworking.2018.8696504(1-9)Online publication date: May-2018
  • Show More Cited By

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  1. Cheap silicon: a myth or reality? picking the right data plane hardware for software defined networking

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    HotSDN '13: Proceedings of the second ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Hot topics in software defined networking
    August 2013
    182 pages
    ISBN:9781450321785
    DOI:10.1145/2491185
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Publication History

    Published: 16 August 2013

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    Author Tags

    1. cost
    2. data plane
    3. efficiency
    4. network processor
    5. openflow
    6. performance
    7. power
    8. software defined networking

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    • Research-article

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    SIGCOMM'13
    Sponsor:
    SIGCOMM'13: ACM SIGCOMM 2013 Conference
    August 16, 2013
    Hong Kong, China

    Acceptance Rates

    HotSDN '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 38 of 84 submissions, 45%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 88 of 198 submissions, 44%

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2020)DeepMatchProceedings of the 16th International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies10.1145/3386367.3431290(336-350)Online publication date: 23-Nov-2020
    • (2020)Transition to SDN is HARMLESS: Hybrid Architecture for Migrating Legacy Ethernet Switches to SDNIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2019.295876228:1(275-288)Online publication date: Feb-2020
    • (2018)HARMLESS: Cost-Effective Transitioning to SDN for Small Enterprises2018 IFIP Networking Conference (IFIP Networking) and Workshops10.23919/IFIPNetworking.2018.8696504(1-9)Online publication date: May-2018
    • (2018)FASSecurity and Communication Networks10.1155/2018/56502052018Online publication date: 1-Jan-2018
    • (2017)HARMLESSProceedings of the SIGCOMM Posters and Demos10.1145/3123878.3131997(91-93)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2017
    • (2015)A network function modeling approach for performance estimation2015 IEEE 1st International Forum on Research and Technologies for Society and Industry Leveraging a better tomorrow (RTSI)10.1109/RTSI.2015.7325152(527-533)Online publication date: Sep-2015
    • (2015)Open, elastic provisioning of hardware acceleration in NFV environments2015 International Conference and Workshops on Networked Systems (NetSys)10.1109/NetSys.2015.7089057(1-5)Online publication date: Mar-2015
    • (2015)Cross-Platform Estimation of Network Function PerformanceProceedings of the 2015 Fourth European Workshop on Software Defined Networks10.1109/EWSDN.2015.64(73-78)Online publication date: 30-Sep-2015
    • (2015)EPC in the CloudSoftware Defined Mobile Networks (SDMN)10.1002/9781118900253.ch7(107-128)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2015
    • (2014)SDN FuturesSoftware Defined Networks10.1016/B978-0-12-416675-2.00013-9(281-294)Online publication date: 2014
    • Show More Cited By

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