NetREC: Network-wide in-network REal-value Computation

Matthews Jose, Kahina Lazri, Jerome Francois, Olivier Festor

Abstract

The current generation of networks empowers the use of programmable switches whose behaviour can be defined using languages like P4. Nevertheless, these languages do not support network-wide deployment of stateful real-value functions. This paper presents NetREC, an extension of RMT programmable data planes designed to enable stateful real-value functions computation across multiple switches. NetREC first decomposes the real-value functions into a dependency graph of elementary operations that are distributed among the network. This distribution is carried out by dynamically generating and solving an integer linear program. We deploy a prototype of NetREC on a network of Tofino switches and demonstrate its capability of computing recursive real-value functions like exponential weighted moving average.