Programmable networks are emerging to fundamentally change the way we design, build, and manage computer networks. Programmable networks have been a longstanding goal for both networking researchers and operators. This goal is now rapidly being realized with the rise of programmable network devices in the form of network interface cards, middleboxes, and switches and new advanced network applications being developed by researchers and network operators. It is a grand challenge for the community to rethink the full software stack for such networks---from exploiting sublinear algorithms and compact data structures to efficiently realize network applications with limited resources, to developing high-level programming frameworks, to designing new hardware architectures for programmable packet processing. This requires combining ideas from multiple research areas such as networking, algorithms, programming languages, and computer architecture.

This workshop will bring together researchers working in these different research areas to exchange ideas and identify key research challenges in programmable networks going forward. Our primary goal is to stimulate discussion between different researchers engaged in research on programmable networks and to broaden the research community. As a concrete output from the workshop, we will produce a report that summarizes the workshop, identifies a set of themes for future research, and makes recommendations on infrastructure support (e.g., testbeds).

Workshop organizers:

Anirudh Sivaraman (New York University)

Xin Jin (Johns Hopkins University)

Vladimir Braverman (Johns Hopkins University)

Mohammad Alizadeh (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Jennifer Rexford (Princeton University)

NSF Sponsors:

Jack Brassil

Tracy J Kimbrel