Motorola

The conventional workload for network processors and similar communication devices used to consist of simple packet forwarding and filtering algorithms based on the addresses found in layer-2 or layer-3 protocol packets. However, the network workloads of today include traffic shaping, flow management, network firewalls, network address and protocol translations, load balancing, etc. Data-plane workloads which perform classification, header modification, and forwarding, have been understood to some extent, whereas control plane workloads that perform flow management, higher-level protocols, signaling and other control tasks are not understood. The objective of this project will be to develop representative control plane network workloads and characterize them to understand their properties.