Three decades after the origin of the World Wide Web, scientists from the University of Cornel and Open University of the Netherlands presented a significant breakthrough in the field of Internet technologies. They have developed a new programmable network model that offers flexible management of the data transmission process on the Internet.
Anshuman Mohan, a graduate student at the University of Cornelsky and one of the authors of the study, emphasized that earlier control over the process of transmitting information via the Internet was limited. Their development is aimed at ensuring more subtle management of this process, without slowing down the operation of the network.
The article awarded the ACM OOPSLA 2022 conference. Researchers have laid the foundations for creating hardware and software systems that can flexibly set up routing.
The key element of the Internet infrastructure is a switch – a device the size of a small box connecting computers to the network and controlling data streams. The package planner built into the switch is responsible for the priority and order of data processing from numerous users, including email messages, video calls, and loading web pages.
However, the parameters of the switch’s operation are currently fixed and cannot be changed after its production. This prevents prompt response to changing network needs, according to the authors of the study.
“What should have priority – your film from Netflix or an urgent warning from a weather service about an impending hurricane?” asks a rhetorical question, Doctorant Mohan. The current routing policy may not always be optimal.
The proposed model of a software and configurated network, described in the article, will solve this problem. It will give administrators the opportunity to customize the switch’s internal routing according to their preferences. Users will be able to change the routing policy as often as every hour without needing to modify the hardware.
“Our approach, which uses the methods of the theory of programming languages, demonstrates how a wide range of options for package planning can be flexibly implemented on one device,” summarizes Mohan.