episode-14.xml

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  <title>Converging Approaches to Software Switches</title>
  <description>
    <p>
      On Aug. 4 and 5, I attended <a
      href="http://www.cs.hku.hk/apsys2016/program.html">APSys 2016</a>, the
      Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems.  This episode is my own ``industry
      talk'' from APSys, titled ``Converging Approaches in Software Switches:
      Combining code- and data-driven approaches to achieve a better result.''
      <a
      href="http://www.cs.hku.hk/apsys2016/assets/converging-approaches-apsys.pdf">Slides</a>
      from the talk are available and may provide a little extra insight, but
      it is not necessary to view them to follow along with with the talk.
    </p>

    <p>
      This talk introduces the idea that software switches can be broadly
      divided in terms of their architecture into two categories:
      ``code-driven'' switches that call a series of arbitrary functions on
      each packet, and ``data-driven'' switches that use a single engine to
      apply actions selected from a series of tables.  This talk explains the
      two models and the usefulness of the categorization, and explain how
      hybrids of the two models can build on the strengths of both.
    </p>

    <p>
      In the past, people have asked me to compare Open vSwitch to other
      software switches, both architecture- and performance-wise.  This talk is
      the closest that I plan to come to a direct comparison.  In it, I cover a
      key architectural difference between Open vSwitch and most other software
      switches, and I explain why that architectural difference makes a
      difference for benchmarks that authors of many software switches like to
      tout.
    </p>

    <p>
      This talk includes a very kind introduction from <a
      href="http://www.cse.iitd.ernet.in/~sbansal/">Sorav Bansal</a>, assistant
      professor at IIT-Delhi, as well as several questions and answers
      interleaved, including some from Sorav and some from others' whose names
      I did not catch.
    </p>

    <p class="attribution">
      OVS Orbit is produced by <a href="mailto:blp@ovn.org">Ben Pfaff</a>.  The
      intro music in this episode is <a
      href="http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/AlexBeroza/43098">Drive</a>,
      featuring cdk and DarrylJ, copyright 2013, 2016 by Alex.  The bumper music is
      <a href="http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/speck/42100">Yeah Ant</a>
      featuring Wired Ant and Javolenus, copyright 2013 by Speck.  The outro
      music is <a href="http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/Kirkoid/43005">Space
      Bazooka</a> featuring Doxen Zsigmond, copyright 2013 by Kirkoid.  All content is licensed under a Creative Commons <a
      href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">Attribution 3.0
      Unported (CC BY 3.0)</a> license.
    </p>
  </description>
<pubDate>Sun, 28 Aug 2016 20:32:40 GMT</pubDate>
</item>