ImpNet: Programming Software-Defied Networks Using Imperative Techniques

TL;DR

ImpNet is an imperative high-level programming language designed for software-defined networks, enabling efficient and straightforward programming of network controllers to manage switches and network policies.

Contribution

The paper introduces ImpNet, a novel imperative programming language for SDN controllers, with formal semantics and practical applications demonstrated.

Findings

ImpNet allows concise programming of network policies.

ImpNet's semantics facilitate understanding and verification of network programs.

Two applications programmed in ImpNet are demonstrated.

Abstract

Software and hardware components are basic parts of modern networks. However the software compo- nent is typical sealed and function-oriented. Therefore it is very difficult to modify these components. This badly affected networking innovations. Moreover, this resulted in network policies having complex interfaces that are not user-friendly and hence resulted in huge and complicated flow tables on physical switches of networks. This greatly degrades the network performance in many cases. Software-Defined Networks (SDNs) is a modern architecture of networks to overcome issues mentioned above. The idea of SDN is to add to the network a controller device that manages all the other devices on the network including physical switches of the network. One of the main tasks of the managing process is switch learning; achieved via programming physical switches of the network by adding or removing rules for packet-processing to/from switches, more specifically to/from their flow tables. A high-level imperative network programming language, called ImpNet, is presented in this paper. ImpNet enables writing efficient, yet simple, and powerful programs to run on the controller to control all other network devices including switches. ImpNet is compositional, simply-structured, expressive, and more importantly imperative. The syntax of ImpNet together two types of operational semantics to contracts of ImpNet are presented in the paper. The proposed semantics are of the static and dynamic types. Two modern application programmed using ImpNet are shown in the paper as well. The semantics of the applications are shown in the paper also.