Volpano, Dennis M.

An important part of extending cyberspace capabilities is being able to create the networks that deliver content more flexibly and easily.  Ideally they would be defined completely in software.  Software-defined networking (SDN) has made some progress here by allowing routers and switches to be controlled in a logically centralized way. However, SDN is limited to controlling conventional network devices. So it is unsuitable as a platform for building new capabilities.  A more promising platform decomposes network functions into basic software operators and combines them in different ways to build the necessary capabilities. This has two major advantages: 1) capabilities are guaranteed to be correct and secure, and 2) they are realized in software running on relatively inexpensive commodity x86 devices, not commercial switches and routers. We propose to develop a prototype of such a platform. Specifically, we plan to build a base set of operators and then design a compiler to compile them into executables.
Computer Science
Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command
Marine Corps
2017