Data plane programming enables the programmability of network devices with domain-specific programming languages, like P4. One commonly used P4-programmable hardware target is the Intel Tofino switching ASIC. The runtime behavior of an implemented P4 program on Tofino can be configured with shell scripts or a Python library from Barefoot provided with the Tofino. Both are limited in their capabilities and usability. This paper introduces the Rust Barefoot Runtime (RBFRT), a Rust-based control plane library. The RBFRT provides a fast and memory-safe interface to configure the Intel Tofino. We showed that the RBFRT achieves a higher insertion rate for MAT entries and has a shorter response time compared to the Python library.
@article{arxiv.2501.17271,
title = {Rust Barefoot Runtime (RBFRT): Fast Runtime Control for the Intel Tofino},
author = {Etienne Zink and Moritz Flüchter and Steffen Lindner and Fabian Ihle and Michael Menth},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.17271},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
This work has been accepted at the 4th KuVS Workshop on Network Softwarization (KuVS NetSoft) under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0)