A flexible router platform for next generation network services

Autonomous services need a flexible router platform that provides the mechanisms to install, modify and remove services at run-time of the node without interfering with others. Instantiated services must have the ability to re-configure and to exchange service functionality themselves. Envisioned router platforms must be able to run multiple services in parallel and are required to scale with the number of network-interfaces while they need to provide a straightforward to use service programming interface. In this talk, we present the PromethOS NP router platform together with a service architecture to counteract distributed denial of service attacks in an autonomous way. PromethOS NP manages and controls a processor-hierarchy composed of host processors and network processors embedded in network interface cards. It provides a dynamically code-extensible router platform of which all processor tiers are at run-time programmable following a unified component programming model. The service architecture illustrates the capabilities of the router platform and its applicability to autonomous network services.