P4-programmable Data Plane for Content-based Publish/Subscribe

Abstract

The domain-specific programming language P4 enables developers to specify how data plane devices (e.g., switches, routers) process packets. This opens up novel opportunities for efficient information dissemination at the network layer drastically reducing notification delays compared to applicationlayer publish/subscribe using broker overlay networks.

In this paper, we present three different strategies that use P4 to realize content-based publish/subscribe. We start with a source routing strategy that is, then, improved to exploit and adapt a preinstalled forwarding tree by adding or removing branches if required. The most advanced strategy enables multiple forwarding trees to be dynamically stitched and adapted as needed.