Serviter: A service-oriented programmable network platform for shared infrastructure

Active Networks propose a new approach for dynamic service deployment through the introduction of extensible software components and per-packet processing in the forwarding plane. By doing so, this approach causes serious degradation to performance, scalability, and reliability levels achievable in current networks. Furthermore, current Active Network architectures cannot guarantee isolation among conflicting services or services competing for limited resources. The focus of this paper is on service isolation and a programmable approach whereby service introduction is restricted to the control plane and per-packet processing is performed by reconfigurable dedicated hardware. In particular, we present Serviter, a Service-Oriented Programmable Network Platform for Shared Networks. Serviter employs separated control and forwarding planes. It enables on-demand service deployment in a partitioned and hardware optimised control plane. It facilitates safe node sharing by providing each trusted user (e.g. an ISP) with a secure, separate, and resource assured partition, representing a ‘virtual router’, to accommodate their services. Serviter employs a new QoS-differentiated allocation mechanism, called Control plane-Quality of Service, to allocate the platform internal resources fairly and efficiently among partitions and their services.