A compiler and run-time system for network programming languages

Software-defined networks (SDNs) are a new implementation architecture in which a controller machine manages a distributed collection of switches, by instructing them to install or uninstall packet-forwarding rules and report traffic statistics. The recently formed Open Networking Consortium, whose members include Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, and others, hopes to use this architecture to transform the way enterprise and data center networks are implemented. But to do this, they need novel programming languages to help them craft network-wide algorithms for routing, energy-efficient network management, dynamic access control, traffic monitoring, and other applications. In this paper, we define a high-level language, called NCore, for expressing packet-forwarding policies and traffic-statistics queries. The language is designed to be simple, expressive, and compositional. We define a formal semantics for NCore and show how to compile it to a distributed switch-controller...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2012
• Where: POPL
• Authors: Christopher Monsanto, Nate Foster, Rob Harrison, David Walker
• Keywords: Compilation Algorithm, Network Programming Language, POPL 2012, Programming Languages, Run Time System