An Intelligent and Programmable Data Plane for QoS-Aware Packet Processing

One of the main features of data plane programmability is that it allows the easy deployment of a programmable network traffic management framework. One can build an early-stage Internet traffic classifier to facilitate effective Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning. However, maintaining accuracy and efficiency (i.e., processing delay/pipeline latency) in early-stage traffic classification is challenging due to memory and operational constraints in the network data plane. Additionally, deploying network-wide flow-specific rules for QoS leads to significant memory usage and overheads. To address these challenges, we propose new architectural components encompassing efficient processing logic into the programmable traffic management framework. In particular, we propose a single feature-based traffic classification algorithm and a stateless QoS-aware packet scheduling mechanism. Our approach first focuses on maintaining accuracy and processing efficiency in early-stage traffic classification by leveraging a single input feature - sequential packet size information. We then use the classifier to embed the Service Level Objective (SLO) into the header of the packets. Carrying SLOs inside the packet allows QoS-aware packet processing through admission control-enabled priority queuing. The results show that most flows are properly classified with the first four packets. Furthermore, using the SLO-enabled admission control mechanism on top of the priority queues enables stateless QoS provisioning. Our approach outperforms the classical and objective-based priority queuing in managing heterogeneous traffic demands by improving network resource utilization.