Sept 8, 2022
White Paper: Timestamping and Clock Synchronisation in P4-Programmable Platforms
Tomáš Martínek, Mauro Campanella, Federico Pederzolli, Joseph Hill, Marinos Dimolianis, Damian Parniewicz
This white paper investigates the capabilities of current P4-programmable platforms in terms of timestamps and clock synchronisation, and evaluates their readiness for emerging In-band Network Telemetry (INT) monitoring applications. It provides a summary of INT, introduces the concepts of time synchronisation, and presents a review of current P4 platforms’ capabilities, including the practical implications for INT.
Paper Accepted by IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management Special issue on Latest Developments for Security Management of Networks and Services
April 2021
Paper: In-Network Volumetric DDoS Victim Identification Using Programmable Commodity Switches
Damu Ding, Marco Savi, Federico Pederzolli, Mauro Campanella, Domenico Siracusa
Volumetric distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks have become one of the most significant threats to modern telecommunication networks. However, most existing defense systems require that detection software operates from a centralized monitoring collector, leading to increased traffic load and delayed response. The recent advent of Data Plane Programmability (DPP) enables an alternative solution: threshold-based volumetric DDoS detection can be performed directly in programmable switches to skim only potentially hazardous traffic, to be analyzed in depth at the controller. In this paper, we first introduce the BACON data structure based on sketches, to estimate per-destination flow cardinality, and theoretically analyze it. Then we employ it in a simple in-network DDoS victim identification strategy, INDDoS, to detect the destination IPs for which the number of incoming connections exceeds a pre-defined threshold. We describe its hardware implementation on a Tofino-based programmable switch using the domain-specific P4 language, proving that some limitations imposed by real hardware to safeguard processing speed can be overcome to implement relatively complex packet manipulations. Finally, we present some experimental performance measurements, showing that our programmable switch is able to keep processing packets at line-rate while performing volumetric DDoS detection, and also achieves a high F1 score on DDoS victim identification.
Feb 25, 2021
Whitepaper
Whitepaper: In-band Network Telemetry Tests in NREN networks
This document focuses on the experience of running INT in a geographically distributed testbed spanning three sites and deployed on top of the production NREN networks. Testing is performed by adding an INT header to each packet in medium-capacity UDP flows between the sites. The added INT header contains packet-specific flow and time quantities that are analysed at the destination. The document details the design choices taken, the operational challenges faced and the initial results, which demonstrate the potential for high precision monitoring through the use of INT.
March 2, 2021
InfoShare
InfoShare : Deploying In-band Network Telemetry (INT) on R&E Networks (slides)
Video of INT Infoshare
Mauro Campanella (GARR), Federico Pederzolli (FBK), Tomas Martinek (CESNET), Damian Parniewicz (PSNC)
May 6, 2020,
Feb 5, 2020
Data Plane Programmability
Mauro Campanella (GARR), Marco Savi (FBK), Pavel Benacek (CESNET), Damian Parniewicz (PSNC) (slides)
Network Technology Evolution, GÉANT Symposium
