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OP4T: Bringing Advanced Network Packet Timestamping into the Field

  • Cisco Systems

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Because it is very bursty, the microsecond-scale temporal behaviour of network traffic in data-centres is challenging to measure and understand. To bring observability into data-centre networks, this paper introduces the Open Platform for Programmable Precise Packet Timestamping (OP4T), a hardware architecture, targeting Field-Programmable Gateway Arrays (FPGAs), integrated into data-centre servers as a Smart Network Interface Card (SmartNIC), and flexible enough to enable advanced latency diagnosis.In this paper, OP4T is specified, and an open-source implementation of that architecture is proposed, targeting the NetFPGA SUME prototyping board. By leveraging the P4 programming language, and partial reconfiguration, that opensource implementation is experimentally shown to enable in-band, precise packet timestamping, without sacrificing the achievable throughput. As an illustration, OP4T is shown to be usable to measure fine-grained properties of a software packet forwarder, e.g., packet batching.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication35th International Conference on Information Networking, ICOIN 2021
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
Pages137-142
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781728191003
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 13 Jan 2021
Event35th International Conference on Information Networking, ICOIN 2021 - Jeju Island, Korea, Republic of
Duration: 13 Jan 202116 Jan 2021

Publication series

NameInternational Conference on Information Networking
Volume2021-January
ISSN (Print)1976-7684

Conference

Conference35th International Conference on Information Networking, ICOIN 2021
Country/TerritoryKorea, Republic of
CityJeju Island
Period13/01/2116/01/21

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