Department of Computer Science, Princeton University
Monday, October 28th, 11:00am in Davis Auditorium, CEPSR
Abstract:
Modern computer networks perform a bewildering array of
tasks, from routing and traffic monitoring, to access control and
server load balancing. Yet, managing these networks is unnecessarily
complicated and error-prone, due to a heterogeneous mix of devices
(e.g., routers, switches, firewalls, and network-address translators)
with closed and proprietary configuration interfaces. The emergence of
Software Defined Networking (SDN) is poised to change all this by
offering a clean and open interface between networking devices and the
software that controls them. In particular, many commercial switches
support the OpenFlow protocol, and a number of campus, data-center, and
backbone networks have deployed the new technology. Many example SDN
applications (e.g., server load balancing, seamless virtual machine
migration, traffic engineering, and energy-efficient networking)
illustrate SDN's potential to transform future networks. Yet, while SDN
makes it possible to program the network, it does not make it easy.
Today's OpenFlow controllers offer very low-level APIs that mimic the
underlying switch hardware. To reach SDN's full potential, we need to
identify the right higher-level abstractions for creating (and
composing) powerful applications. In the Frenetic project
(www.frenetic-lang.org), we are designing simple and intuitive
abstractions for programming SDNs, including ways to query network
state, compose application modules, and update a distributed set of
switches. These abstractions substantially lower the barrier for
innovating inside the network.
This is joint work with the rest of the Frenetic team, including Nate
Foster (Cornell), Arjun Guha (UMass-Amherst), Joshua Reich (Princeton),
Cole Schlesinger (Princeton), and David Walker (Princeton).
Bio: Jennifer Rexford is the Gordon Y.S. Wu Professor of Engineering in the Computer Science Department at Princeton University. While working at AT&T Research from 1996 to 2005, she designed network-management techniques that are in daily use in AT&T's backbone network. Jennifer was chair of ACM SIGCOMM from 2003 to 2007, and currently co-chairs the advisory council of NSF's CISE directorate. She is an ACM Fellow and received ACM's Grace Murray Hopper Award for outstanding young computer professional of the year in 2005.