On Network Systems Design: Pushing the Performance Envelope via FPGA Prototyping

Performance studies of computer network systems traditionally relied on mathematical modelling. Then, to deal with the increasingly complex systems in a meaningful manner, simulation and emulation tools have been developed to circumvent the intractability or the oversimplification that comes with mathematical methods. However, such emulation methods still make many simplifying assumptions as they are incapable of capturing the real system in its totality. Recently, Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based prototyping systems have become an affordable option for researchers as an easy and quick tool for network system prototyping. In this paper, we motivate system prototyping based research via FPGA in conducting research experiments as well as facilitating new system designs where some traditional software functions are offloaded to the FPGA. We present a new switch prototype and preliminary results from its deployment in a real testbed.