The goal of P4MT is to leverage the role-based control mechanism in P4Runtime Specification to further enable multi-tenancy on a single P4 switch. The evaluation results show that P4MT consumes only a small percentage of ASIC space and causes a negligible increment in data plane/control plane latency. International P4 Experimental Networks (i-P4EN) has been created to realize the potential of P4 experimental networks. To perform multiple experiments for research groups, multitenancy is required to increase the efficiency of the testbed. By modifying the P4Runtime design and P4 pipeline, we designed and implemented multi-tenancy on a P4 switch. With P4MT, each tenant can select its own P4 pipeline and control the packet processing without intervening with the packet processing of other tenants. Future work includes supporting P4 Externs for programmable data plane networking, multi-tenant networking and automatic pipeline migration on P4MT.

To realize P4 language benefits: “Protocol Independent, Target Independent, Field Reconfigurable” [1] in a network research and development environment, a few P4 research institutions around the world formed a partnership to design and implement the international P4 Experimental Networks (Figure 1). The participating institutions can share distributed P4 resources over international research and education networks, as well as initiate international P4 research collaboration projects. Initial network scenarios in this research testbed are Software-Defined Network Exchanges (SDXs), Network and Cloud Testbed Networks, Science Networks, and Campus Research Networks. These four network scenarios require multi-tenant support. Current P4Runtime specifications include a Multi-Controller design for twofold: Control Plane Partition and Redundancy [2]. However, the current P4Runtime does not implement Control Plane partition to support multi-tenant service on a switch. This project modified the current design to support a provider and multiple tenant model for the four international P4 Experimental Networks (i-P4EN)scenarios and other applications.

Entropy can be used as a measure of concentration and dispersion on a particular header space for network traffic analysis. This work presents the implementation of a sketch-based entropy estimation on programmable data plane ASICs using P4. The estimation scheme, proposed by Clifford and Cosma, leverages the random projection of a maximally skewed stable distribution. On top of a Barefoot Tofino switch, this work transforms the complex computations of the random projection into fast lookup over pre-computed tables in the match-action pipeline. Performance is evaluated based on real-world network traffic traces. Minimum-sized Ethernet frames are generated by hardware traffic generator with pre-defined distributions. The system can estimate the entropy of network traffic accurately at full wire-speed of 100 Gbps throughput.

For many years, experimental network research test beds have been designed and implemented to explore theoretical concepts at scale, progressing beyond ideas that initially may have been explored through lab simulation and modeling. However, traditionally, such test beds almost always were created for specific, highly defined projects, and they were designed to last for fairly short periods of time. More recently, network research communities have been designing, implementing, and operating new types of large scale experimental network test beds, including those global in scope, which are intended to be long term persistent resources and can support multiple types of experiments. These test beds reflect recent innovations in architecture and in core technologies and also the declining cost curves of basic components, a trend which is reducing the economic barriers to developing test beds. This paper presents several key ideas motivating the creation of next generation test beds and it describes design concepts, core technologies, and operational issues. This paper also describes a number of recent and current large scale test beds that have been created to advance the state of communications, especially those designed to assist in providing a transition to the future Internet.