Application switch using DPN for improving TCP based data center applications

Current network switches cannot be programmed and flexibly controlled. Then, developers of a data center application system, which is composed of software and computers connected with a network, are not able to optimize behavior of network switches on which the application is running. On the other hand, Deeply Programmable Network (DPN) switches can completely analyze packet payloads and be profoundly programmed. In our previous work, we introduced an application switch based on DPN. The switch was able to be deeply programed and developers could implement a part of functions of a data center application in the switch. The switch deeply analyzed packets, which is called Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), and provided some functions of the application in the switch. However, the switch did not manage connection and not support communication with TCP. In this paper, we proposed a method for constructing an application switch supporting TCP based communication. The method analyzes IP headers, TCP headers, and payloads of packets. When the switch detects a request which the switch supports, the switch replies according to its TCP session. We then introduce our implementation and evaluate performance of our application switch. Our evaluation has demonstrated that our switch has been able to improve performance of the data center applications.