Foundations of Zero-Touch Computer Networks

Description of the research topic:

With the advent of programmable data planes, a new era has begun in computer networking, transforming networks from packet forwarding infrastructures to programmable end-to-end platforms. The main idea of Software-Defined Networking 1.0 (SDN 1.0) was the separation of data and control planes in switching devices and opening the control plane supervised by a logically centralized software controller. In addition to the control plane programmability of SDN 1.0, data plane programmability allows network operators to get full control over their infrastructure. They cannot only describe how the control plane applications need to fill tables in the packet forwarding devices, but they can define how these devices should handle or process packets. In contrast to SDN 1.0, modifying the low-level packet processing does not require redesigning the underlying switching microchip (ASIC); it can easily be described in software. As Nick McKeown said in his keynote at NetDev 0x14: „We will no longer think in terms of protocols. Instead, we will think in terms of software. All functions and “protocols” will have migrated up and out of hardware into software. Throughout the Internet.”. In future programmable networks, the control plane can continuously monitor the network states and react to them in many ways. This extended visibility will lay down the foundations of self-driving and intent-based networks. Deeply programmable networks will reshape computer networks in the future and pave the road towards unforeseen innovations in the field. However, they will also result in many challenges relating to security, reliability, and trust in the networking software.
In this research topic, we will focus on these challenges, aiming to answer different research questions from the following fields:
– New network algorithms for intent-based traffic engineering solely in the data plane
– Programming network as a big switch, disaggregation of data and control plane programs
– Utilization-aware routing
– In-network acceleration of various applications
– Anomalous and malicious traffic behavior detection and mitigation in the data plane
– Detection and diagnosis of performance problems by measurements in the data plane
– Fast recovery after failure detection

Thesis supervisor: Sándor Laki

How to Apply?

If you are interested apply here: [PhD] Doctoral School of Informatics – Eötvös Loránd University (elte.hu)

For more information visite the following website: Doctoral School of Informatics (elte.hu)

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