Integrating Active Networking and Commercial-Grade Routing Platforms

Current network nodes enable connectivity between end-systems by supporting a static and well-defined set of protocols. The forwarding service provided by these network nodes is fixed, simple, and increasingly being implemented in hardware. Active network nodes, on the other hand, enable the unattended, dynamic instantiation of custom programs into the network node, allowing for the introduction of new protocols and services at runtime. Current prototype implementations of active network nodes achieve this flexibility by injecting a significant amount of software into the forwarding path.

This paper describes an Active Network platform that is ideally suited for integration into modern, commercial-grade network nodes, such as router and switches with silicon-based forwarding paths. This Active Network platform supports the dynamic introduction of application services that can alter packet processing; it comprises the Oplet Runtime Environment (ORE) and the Java Forwarding (JFWD) API. The ORE is the substrate that provides for the secure downloading, installation, and safe execution of network services. The JFWD API is a uniform, plaform-independent portal through which software services can control the forwarding path of heterogeneous network nodes. We describe how existing active networking environments can be ported onto this Active Network platform and present performance results for dynamically loaded network services on the Accelar Gigabit Ethernet Routing Switch product.