NetSophon: Enabling Runtime Copilot for Programmable Dataplane for Cloud Operators

Runtime traffic analysis on programmable data-plane requires substantial human effort, and the high speed and complexity of dataplane often make human capacity the efficiency bottleneck. While existing work has proposed LLM-based approaches, they typically rely on offline network logs, failing to address the human capacity limitations in real-time environments. This paper explores the potential of leveraging evolving LLMs to mitigate these human-centric challenges in real physical dataplane. It outlines a novel framework called NetSophon, which features an LLM-based brain for efficient decision-making and an effective arm to manipulate and perceive the physical programmable dataplane. Through interactions among the brain, arm, and dataplane, NetSophon acts as a "super-copilot" for human operators, facilitating real-time dataplane traffic analysis at scale. A case study demonstrates NetSophon’s potential to assist human operators in interacting with dataplane.