Expressing meaningful processing requirements among heterogeneous nodes in an active network

Active Network technology envisions deployment of virtual execution environments within network elements, such as switches and routers. As a result, nonhomogeneous processing can be applied to network traffic associated with services, flows, or even individual packets. To use such a technology safely and efficiently, individual nodes must provide mechanisms to enforce resource limits. To provide effective enforcement mechanisms, each node must have a meaningful understanding of the resource requirements for specific network traffic. In Active Network nodes, resource requirements typically come in three categories: bandwidth, memory, and processing. Well-accepted metrics exist for expressing bandwidth (bits per second) and memory (bytes) in units independent of the capabilities of particular nodes. Unfortunately, no well-accepted metric exists for expressing processing (i.e., CPU time) requirements in a platformindependent form. This paper investigates a method to express the CPU time ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: WOSP
• Authors: Virginie Galtier, Kevin L. Mills, Yannick Carlinet, Stefan Leigh, Andrew L. Rukhin
• Keywords: Active Applications, Active Networks, CPU Time, Software Engineering, WOSP 2000