NEAT: NEtwork dATa plane measurements as first class primitive

Data centre networks are poorly equipped to rapidly spot and address failures, resulting in countless well-documented application performance degradation or outages. This is because the investigation process is performed in centralised commodity servers (collectors) that do not have per-packet visibility, but instead aggregated and sampled statistics from the data plane. The NEAT project will address this deficiency by moving traffic analysis directly into switches that have per-packet visibility. Exploiting advances in programmable hardware, e.g. P4, NEAT will rethink data plane operation and will transform switches from just packet forwarder with limited monitoring capabilities to more intelligent systems capable of analysing traffic and exporting only relevant results. This will enable the level of fine-grained data plane visibility required to allow operators to rapidly identify and adapt to changes in network conditions, which hurts applications.

The NEAT research programme targets one of the most critical part of today's Internet: data centres. Data centres are a fundamental part of UK infrastructure, underpinning a wide range of activities across government, business, and society. Specifically, NEAT focuses on improving the current monitoring and traffic analysis practices by leveraging data plane programmability on top of an SDN control plane. In this context, my impact plan will reach and influence two main two main constituencies: (1) industry and organisations providing the data centre infrastructure, platforms and services and (2) standardisation bodies developing and promoting open standards in both the SDN and programmable data plane area.

Enabling network traffic analysis techniques in the context of data centres impact a number of players spanning from industry to organisations. The letters of support accompanying this proposal indicate the serious and deep interest in NEAT from a broad array of players: Cisco Systems is a leading networking company, which designs, manufactures, and sells network equipment; Barefoot Networks is another leading networking company, which designs and produces programmable network switch silicon, systems and software. VMware is a subsidiary of Dell Technologies, that provides cloud and vitalisation software and services; CERN is a European research organisation that operates the biggest particle physics
laboratory in the world, where a large computing facility is used to store and analyse data from experiments, as well as simulate events. Those players, given the mixture of expertise ranging from data centre operation to switch design, are key elements to foster innovation in data plane assisted network traffic analysis. They are eager to provide support and benefit from the output of my research by helping a smooth transition from the theory to the practice.

NEAT project will contribute to open standards for programmable networking and monitoring. Standardisation efforts in SDN and data plane programmability are currently thriving with a broad commercial and academic support. I will take part in activities and working groups such as the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), P4 and the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) to emphasise the importance of data plane assisted traffic analysis in the next generation data centres. My former status of ONF Research Associate and the engagement with Barefoot Networks (see letter of support) opens the door for a fruitful collaboration towards new open standards.

The open source NetFPGA platform is also of particular relevance to NEAT. NetFPGA is an open source hardware/software system with high impact. The NetFPGA platform is a joint project between Stanford University and University of Cambridge, providing an ideal means to disseminate NEAT technology developments to a wide community of researchers, adopters, and investors. Leveraging my status of active member of the official NetFPGA development team and to stimulate a quick uptake of the ideas and prototypes developed under NEAT, I will make the code available under an open source licence. My goal is to build an active user group to eventually provide the research community and industry with mature instruments for exploring theoretical and practical aspects of the NEAT vision.

The novelty, timeliness, and relevance of the NEAT project will ensure a widespread interest in its results from the international community of practitioners, e.g. RIPE, NANOG, MENOG. There will also be abundant opportunities for the technology to be exploited by the industrial supporters. Through those supporters, NEAT will provide significant benefits to the UK industry, increasing its competitiveness in the growing data centre marketplace. The project will lead to high-profile publications and to exciting opportunities for future research. This will further increase the UK's aspirations for the development and use of SDN-enabled technologies.