SELF-CONFIGURABLE ENVIRONMENT FOR THE INTEL IXP2400 NETWORK PROCESSOR

A. Satheesh, S. Krishnaveni, and S. Ponkarthick

Keywords

Network processor, active network, simple object access protocol(SOAP), IXP2400, workload, dynamical adaptation, packet network,run-time adaptation

Abstract

Network processors (NPs) are programmable multi-processor devices that offer both the flexibility and speed required for the network packet processing applications. Current NP systems do not simultaneously deal well with fluctuating workloads. Because of the traffic fluctuations inherent in packet networks, the workload on each pipeline stage in NP may vary significantly over time, thus affecting performance. One solution would be to change the code running at these stages so as to adapt to the fluctuations. Hence, the allocation of processors to pipeline stages needs to be adapted over time. Run-time adaptation is a potential solution to this problem. With run-time adaptation, the mapping of services to system resources can be dynamically adjusted based on the work-load. Dynamically adapting processor allocations reduces the overall resource provisioning requirement for the system. This results in achieving robustness to traffic fluctuations. In this paper, we focus on reconfiguring the system based on the traffic fluctuation. To make decision about the deployment of code, the traffic is monitored and its statistic is maintained. Moreover, active network concept is used for reconfiguring the system, wherein the binary code is transferred to the NP through the SOAP protocol.

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