A Lightweight Southbound Interface for Standalone P4-NetFPGA SmartNICs

Mario Patetta (1) , Stefano Secci (1) , Sami Taktak (1)

1 CEDRIC - ROC - CEDRIC. Réseaux et Objets Connectés

We present a lightweight Southbound Interface (SBI) for P4→NetFPGA devices, aimed at enhancing the capability of NetFPGA Smart Network Interface Cards (SmartNICs) to work in standalone mode. We propose a custom protocol allowing the control plane to remotely populate the board's routing tables and query runtime information. We achieve this thanks to the implementation of a lookup table (LUT) extern function that can be directly edited by the P4 program-a feature notably lacking in the context of P4→NetFPGA.

Mots clés: P4; NetFPGA; Software-Defined Networking; Southbound Interface

Domaines: Réseaux et télécommunications [cs.NI]; Informatique [cs]; Electronique

Mario Patetta, Stefano Secci, Sami Taktak. A Lightweight Southbound Interface for Standalone P4-NetFPGA SmartNICs. 2022 1st International Conference on 6G Networking (6GNet), Jul 2022, Paris, France. ⟨10.1109/6GNet54646.2022.9830380⟩. ⟨hal-03702720⟩