The SwitchWare Project

Welcome to the SwitchWare page, describing research previously done on active networking (a.k.a. Software Defined Networks, or SDN) by the Computer and Information Science department at the University of Pennsylvania and Bellcore (later Telcordia, and now Ericsson).

Active networks explore the idea of allowing routing elements to be extensively programmed by the packets passing through them, now sometimes referred to as Software Defined Networks (SDN). This allows computation previously possible only at endpoints to be carried out within the network itself, thus enabling optimizations and extensions of current protocols as well as the development of fundamentally new protocols.

Briefings from the project

• SwitchWare: Lessons Learned, and Where Next?
  J. M. Smith, Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, December 19th, 2006
• Active Networking: A 2020 Vision November 8th, 1999
  J. M. Smith
• Active Nets and Real-Time Control: Oil and Water, or Oil and Vinegar? April 22nd, 1999
  J. M. Smith
• SwitchWare: Active Network Encapsulation Protocol (ANEP)
  J. M. Smith
• Active Networking on the ENIAC 2000, May 3rd, 1999
  J. M. Smith
• SwitchWare: Accelerating Network Evolution
  J. M. Smith, University College London, July 30th, 1997 - London, UK
• Boosting Towards Active Nets (a talk on network evolution...)
  J. M. Smith, 3rd Hipparch Workshop - Invited Talk, June 12th, 1997, Uppsala SWEDEN.
• Challenge Problems, “Novel Protocols and Network Configurations” Team
  T. Anderson (U. Wash.), B. Marcus (Bellcore), J. M. Smith (U. Penn), Y. Yemini (Columbia U.), November 19th, 1998
• SwitchWare: Accelerating Network Evolution
  University of Pennsylvania and Bellcore
• A Secure PLAN (extended version)
  M. Hicks (Cornell U.), A. D. Keromytis (Columbia U.), J. M. Smith (U. Penn), DARPA Active Networks Conference and Exposition (DANCE), San Francisco CA, May 29-30, 2002
• SwitchWare Lessons Learned
  J. M. Smith, DARPA Active Networks P.I. meeting May 24th, 2000
• DARPA Discussions, 10/3/97
  J. M. Smith
• Active Nets Debate at SIGCOMM
  J. M. Smith
• SwitchWare: Accelerating Network Evolution
  J. M. Smith, David J. Farber (U. Penn), C. A. Gunter and S. M. Nettles (Bell Communications Research, Inc.)
• SwitchWare: Accelerating Network Evolution
  U. Penn. and Telcordia, 03/17/99
• ACTIVE Interconnects: Let’s have some guts!
  J. M. Smith (with I. Hadzic and W. Marcus)
• Active Networks: Tradeoffs for Network Management
  J. M. Smith
• Flexible, Fast and Secure: Why your gut feelings about Active Nets are wrong!
  J. M. Smith
• Active Networking on the ENIAC 2000
  J. M. Smith, May 3rd, 1999
• The Architecture of ALIEN
  S. Alexander, J. M. Smith
• Active Networks: Myths and Measurements
  J. M. Smith, IWAN ‘99, Berlin, July 2nd, 1999
• Active Networks: A Tutorial
  J. M. Smith, Spring School, Lenk, CH March 6-10th, 2000
• SwitchWare Lessons Learned
  J. M. Smith, DARPA Active Networks P.I. meeting, May 24th, 2000
• ACTIVE Interconnects Let’s have some guts!
  J. M. Smith (with I. Hadzic and W. Marcus)
• Active Network Commercialization
  J. M. Smith, Oki Electric, Ltd. October 19th, 2000
• REAL Networks
  J. M. Smith
• Reflections on Active Network Trust
  J. M. Smith, OpenArch Panel, March 26th, 1999
• Security of Programmable Network Infrastructures
  J. M. Smith, OPENSIG, 10/1997
• The Active Network Design Space
  J. M. Smith, Mini-conference, Paris, FRANCE May 17th, 2000
• Secure Active Network Environment (SANE)
  S. Alexander, B. Arbaugh, A. Keromytis, J. M. Smith
• Thinking about network services in the SwitchWare architecture
  J. M. Smith
• Active Optimization of the Internet for Simulation
  Team 1: BBN, Columbia, Telcordia, U. Penn. and U. Wash., Active Nets PI meeting, 4/16/1999
• Active Networks
  J. M. Smith, IEEE Infocom '99 Tutorial, March 22nd, 1999
• Security Issues in Active Networking
  J. M. Smith, IWAN '01 Tutorial, September 30th, 2001
• Security in Active Networks: Problems, Approaches, Results and Challenges
  J. M. Smith, IWAN ‘99 Tutorial, June 30th, 1999
• The Active Donut: Networking at the Edge
  J. M. Smith, Usenix S.F., March 20th, 2000

Activities

• The KeyNote Trust-Management System (software available)
• Packet Language for Active Networks: PLAN(software available!)
• Secure Active Network Environment (SANE) (software available)
• Active Bridge (software available!)
• Active Network Encapsulation Protocol (ANEP): ANEP(software available!)
• Security infrastructure based on Query Certificate Managers.
• Safe and Nimble Active Packets (SNAP): practical programmable packets (software available!)
• SANE O/S
• Cyclone certifying run-time code generator

People

• Scott Alexander
• Bill Arbaugh
• Stuart Eichert
• Dave Farber
• Carl A. Gunter
• Michael Hicks
• Luke Hornof
• Pankaj Kakkar
• Jon Kaplan
• Angelos D. Keromytis
• Bill Marcus
• Jon Moore
• Scott Nettles
• Mark Segal
• Marianne Shaw
• David Sincoskie
• Jonathan Smith

Papers

More papers are available on each of the individual project sites

• The Price of Safety in An Active Network
  D. Scott Alexander, Paul B. Menage, Angelos D. Keromytis, William A. Arbaugh, Kostas G. Anagnostakis, and Jonathan M. Smith. In Journal of Communications and Networks (JCN), special issue on programmable switches and routers, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 4 - 18, March 2001.
• Secure Quality of Service Handling (SQoSH)
  D. Scott Alexander, William A. Arbaugh, Angelos D. Keromytis, Steve Muir, and Jonathan M. Smith. IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 106 - 112, April 2000.
• Towards Practical Programmable Packets
  Jonathan T. Moore and Scott M. Nettles. Technical Report MS-CIS-00-12, University of Pennsylvania, May 2000. Abstract.
• Safe and Efficient Active Packets
  Jonathan T. Moore. Technical Report MS-CIS-99-24, Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, October 1999. Abstract.
• A Secure PLAN
  Michael Hicks and Angelos D. Keromytis. Submitted to IWAN '99.
• Chunks in PLAN: Language Support for Programs as Packets
  Jonathan T. Moore, Michael Hicks, and Scott Nettles. Submitted to IWAN '99.
• Security in Active Networks
  D. Scott Alexander, William A. Arbaugh, Angelos D. Keromytis, and Jonathan M. Smith. To appear in Secure Internet Programming: Issues in Distributed and Mobile Object Systems, Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science State-of-the-Art series.
• The SwitchWare Active Network Implementation
  D. Scott Alexander, Michael W. Hicks, Pankaj Kakkar, Angelos D. Keromytis, Marianne Shaw, Jonathan T. Moore, Carl A. Gunter, Trevor Jim, Scott M. Nettles, and Jonathan M. Smith. The 1998 ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on ML held in conjunction with the International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP) '98.
• Safety and Security of Programmable Network Infrastructures
  D. Scott Alexander, William A. Arbaugh, Angelos D. Keromytis, and Jonathan M. Smith. IEEE Communications Magazine, issue on Programmable Networks, vol. 36, no. 10, pp. 84 - 92.
• PLANet: An Active Internetwork
  To appear in IEEE INFOCOM, New York, 1999.
  Michael Hicks, Jonathan T. Moore, D. Scott Alexander, Carl A. Gunter, and Scott M. Nettles.
• The Price of Safety in an Active Network
  D. Scott Alexander, Kostas G. Anagnostakis, William A. Arbaugh, Angelos D. Keromytis, and Jonathan M. Smith.
• The SwitchWare Active Network Architecture
  D. Scott Alexander, William A. Arbaugh, Michael W. Hicks, Pankaj Kakkar, Angelos D. Keromytis, Jonathan T. Moore, Carl A. Gunter, Scott M. Nettles, and Jonathan M. Smith.
  IEEE Network Special Issue on Active and Controllable Networks, vol. 12 no. 3, pp. 29 - 36.
• A Secure Active Network Architecture: Realization in SwitchWare
  D. Scott Alexander, William A. Arbaugh, Angelos D. Keromytis, and Jonathan M. Smith.
  IEEE Network Special Issue on Active and Controllable Networks, vol. 12 no. 3, pp. 37 - 45.
• PLAN: A Packet Language for Active Networks
  Michael Hicks, Pankaj Kakkar, Jonathan T. Moore, Carl A. Gunter and Scott Nettles.
  Proceedings of the International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP) '98.BIBTEX
• SwitchWare: Towards a 21st Century Network Infrastructure.
  Jonathan Smith, David Farber, Carl A. Gunter, Scott Nettles, Mark Segal, Walter D. Sincoskie, David Feldmeier, and Scott Alexander.
• Active Bridging
  D. Scott Alexander, Marianne Shaw, Scott M. Nettles, and Jonathan M. Smith
  Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM'97 Conference, Cannes, France, September 1997.
• A Secure and Reliable Bootstrap Architecture
  William A. Arbaugh, David J. Farber, and Jonathan M. Smith.
  IEEE Security and Privacy Conference, Oakland, California, May 1997.
• Automated Recovery in a Secure Bootstrap Process
  William A. Arbaugh, Angelos D. Keromytis, David J. Farber, and Jonathan M. Smith.
  Internet Society Symposium on Network and Distributed System Security (SNDSS),pp. 155 - 167, San Diego, March 11-13, 1998.

Talks

• Secure Active Network Environment
  William A. Arbaugh and Jonathan M. Smith. Phoenix PI meeting, 12/97

Related Sites

• Status of the ABONE
• PI Meeting in Philadelphia.
• Active Networks Mailing List Archive
• DARPA Active Network Program
• ActiveNets at MIT.
• CANES at Georgia Tech
• Detour at Washington
• Genesis at Columbia
• Liquid Software at Arizona
• NetScript at Columbia
• Network Flow Language (NFL) at Columbia
• Panda at UCLA.
• Protocol Boosters at Penn and Bellcore.
• Smart Packets at BBN
• PLAN-P at IRISA

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Last updated 5/4/2013
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