Leveraging In-Network Application Awareness

This paper describes a novel approach to Network-Application Integration that leverages ideas from the integration between the network and in-network programs written in languages such as P4. That integration relies on models of the resources that a network makes available on the one hand, and the needs of in-network programs on the other. This paper extends that integration to also include applications' needs on top of in-network programs. This approach thus integrates the network, in-network programs, and applications at the edge of the network, including clients and servers. We explore the properties of this integration, analyse the information on which such an integration can rely, describe a prototype implementation of this idea, and apply it to a network scenario that involves heterogeneous hardware and different applications.