Enabling Multi-Protocol Deployment in Polymorphic Networks

A polymorphic network provides a unified architecture to deploy multiple network protocols. Various network protocols are complemented to accommodate diverse network services. However, conventional implementation strategies relying on naive protocol stacking or virtualization-based deployment have led to uncontrolled network complexity, making it increasingly difficult to support diversified and personalized application demands. This article proposes DEEP, a system that enables multi-protocol deployment with two major goals: performance isolation and unified resource allocation. For performance isolation, DEEP constructs a two-level programmable packet scheduler, providing fine-grained traffic management for various network protocols. It achieves the quality of service (QoS) assurance of multi-protocol in a unified network infrastructure. For unified resource allocation, DEEP prices heterogeneous resources according to QoS requirements of services, realizing dynamic adaptation from heterogeneous resources to network protocols. Finally, we implement DEEP on the polymorphic network devices. The evaluation indicates that DEEP achieves isolation among protocols and high resource utilization for multi-protocol deployment.