The Case for Data Plane Timestamping in SDN

TL;DR

This paper advocates for Data Plane Timestamping in SDN, demonstrating its benefits across multiple applications and showing even minimal timestamp bits can be advantageous.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of Data Plane Timestamping in SDN and analyzes its benefits and applications, highlighting its potential even with minimal bits.

Findings

DPT enhances SDN application capabilities

Even 1-bit timestamps provide significant benefits

DPT is versatile across diverse SDN use cases

Abstract

This paper presents the case for Data Plane Timestamping (DPT). We argue that in the unique environment of Software-Defined Networks (SDN), attaching a timestamp to the header of all packets is a powerful feature that can be leveraged by various diverse SDN applications. We analyze three key use cases that demonstrate the advantages of using DPT, and show that SDN applications can benefit even from using as little as one bit for the timestamp field.