Promile A Management Architecture for Programmable Modular Routers Miguel Rio (joint work with Nicola Pezzi, Luca Zanolin, Hermann De Meer, Wolfgang Emmerich and Cecilia Mascolo) Department of Computer Science University College London

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 Outline Motivation Architecture Overview XML based engine A modular Kernel Conclusions Current Work

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 Motivation Increase network flexibility Allow the fine-grain update of node configurations Allow the management and reconfiguration of multiple and heterogeneous nodes at the same time Be able to change and configure the packet data path at run-time inside each router Easy inclusion of QoS elements Do not affect performance

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 A two-level system XML based engine manager mod3mod4mod5 mod mod1mod2 XML Load module XML Rem. module XML Connect module XML Add Rule XML Remove Rule XML … Forwarding Engine kernel

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 Router Management XML Documents Router 1 Router 3 Router n … Router 2

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 Why XML ? XML allows us to change the syntax of our configurations at run-time XML’s related technologies allow easy update of configurations Easy addressing and manipulation parts of the XML document Several off-the-shelf XML tools

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 A two-level system XML based engine manager mod3mod4mod5 mod mod1mod2 XML Load module XML Rem. module XML Connect module XML Add Rule XML Remove Rule XML … Forwarding Engine kernel

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 DiffServ Example: Module insertion and connection <module fromModuleName="classifier" fromGate="0" toModuleName="dropper" toGate="0"/> <module fromModuleName="dropper" fromGate="0" toModuleName="marker" toGate="0"/>

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 Rule Insertion <rule IPSource=" *" TCPSource=“23" IPDest="" TCPDest="22" class="1"/> <rule IPSource=" *" TCPSource=“22" IPDest="" TCPDest="22" />

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 XML Schema … …

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 A two-level system XML based engine manager mod3mod4mod5 mod mod1mod2 XML Load module XML Rem. module XML Connect module XML Add Rule XML Remove Rule XML … Forwarding Engine kernel

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 A modular kernel Manager Mod Mod 1 Kernel User Space

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 Updating modules using Netlink manager Netlink kernel User Space

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 Example: Differentiated Services Forwarding engine marker dropper classif. policer scheduler …

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 Other applications Firewalls Virtual Private Networks Active Bridging NAT IPv6 migration

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 Implementation XML based engine is implemented in JAVA. Java provides portability and dynamic update of router management code The Kernel modules are implemented in C to prevent significant efficiency losses.

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 Preliminary Evaluation

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 Conclusions XML allows flexibility defining router behaviour. It is portable and it is a well- known markup language Using XML Schema the behaviour grammar can be defined, checked and modified at run- time Our Architecture allows insertion, removal and (re)configuration of modules inside the active router without traffic disruption

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 Related Work MIT’s Click, Router Plugins (Washington): Allow the composition of services at run-time. Plan(Upen) and SafetyNet (Sussex): Strongly typed & O-O specification of network behaviour

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 Current and Future Work Formal description and validation of router configurations Integration with SNMP/MIB framework Extending the model to configure routing protocol elements running in the user level Transactions and Security Application to Ad-Hoc networks Performance Evaluation

25 Sep 2001, Miguel RioOpenSig 2001 Questions ?