East Coast P4 Developer Day, Spring 2018

A presentation by the P4 Language Consortium

Held at Cornell Tech on Friday, March 9, 2018

Registration

Directions

Address: 2 West Loop Road, New York, NY

Transportation Options

  • The Subway is the easiest, fastest, and cheapest way to get to Roosevelt Island.
    • Take the F train​ to the “Roosevelt Island”​ stop.
    • Single ride tickets are $3.00.
  • The Tram is a fun way to travel to Roosevelt Island from Manhattan.
    • Take the Tramway Car at 59th Street & Second Avenue Station (travel time is 4-5 minutes). Exit at the Tramway Station on Roosevelt Island.
    • Single ride tickets are $3.00.
  • The Astoria route of the NYC Ferry offers another great transportation option.
    • The route connects Roosevelt Island to Astoria, Long Island City, Midtown East, and Wall Street.
    • Current one-way fare is $2.75.
  • The Red Bus operates in and around Roosevelt Island and is FREE to ride
    • Click here to view the Red Bus Schedule
  • Q102 MTA Bus is another way to get around within the Island and travel from other boroughs.
  • Driving is another way to and around the Roosevelt Island. You can find Parking at the Motorgate Garage located on 688 Main Street, Roosevelt Island.
  • The Island is only 2 miles in length, so walking​ is a great option for getting around.

Security

After arriving on campus you will first need to proceed to the security desk to pick up your security badge for the day. You will need this badge with you at all times to navigate in & out of the building. After your badge is picked up, you will then proceed to the registration desk where you can get your P4 Developer Day badge.

Virtual Machine

We have created a virtual machine that has all of the software needed to complete the developer day exercises already installed. You can either download a virtual machine image or build it from source. Note that both of these procedures can take around 45 minutes depending on the speed of your network connection.

  • To download the virtual machine image
    1. Install VirtualBox
      https://virtualbox.org
    2. Download virtual machine image
      P4 Tutorial 2018-03-05.ova
    3. Import virtual machine into VirtualBox
      Open VirtualBox, select “File > Import Appliance”, and navigate to the downloaded file.
    4. Boot virtual machine
      Select “P4 Tutorial 2018-03-05”, and click “Start”.
  • To build the virtual machine from source
    1. Install VirtualBox
      https://virtualbox.org
    2. Install Vagrant
      https://vagrantup.com
    3. Clone the tutorial repository
      $ git clone https://github.com/p4lang/tutorials
    4. Navigate to the vm directory
      $ cd tutorials/P4D2_2018_East/vm/
    5. Build the virtual machine
      $ vagrant up
  • Final steps
    After the machine boots, you should have a graphical desktop with all required software pre-installed, logged in as username “p4” (with password “p4”). You may want to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions to optimize the graphics and clipboard interaction with your host OS. See the VirtualBox manual for more details.

Slack

We have set up a Slack to make it easy for participants to ask the TAs questions.

Agenda

  • 8:00 – 8:30am
    • Registration and Breakfast
  • 8:30 – 9:00am
    • Technical Set-up for Hands-on LabIn order to complete the Developer Day exercises, we will distribute a virtual machine with all required software installed.
  • 9:10 – 10:45am
    • Introduction to Data Plane ProgrammingInstructor: Stephen Ibanez (Stanford University)
    • Language BasicsInstructor: Stephen Ibanez (Stanford University)Session 1 will provide a hand-on introduction to P4. Students will start by implementing a “Hello World”-style application to gain an understanding of P4 concepts. The lesson will progressively introduce core language features, such as header/metadata types, packet parsers, and controls. By the end of this session, students will be able to implement a basic IP router.
  • 10:45 – 11:15am
    • Break
  • 11:15 – 11:50
    • Software ToolsInstructor: Praveen Kumar (Cornell University)Session 2 will cover software tools that are essential to developing P4 applications. Students will learn how to invoke the the P4 compiler, run the debugger, and start a P4 software switch. This session will also introduce the control-plane interfaces via P4 Runtime, a protocol-independent API auto-generated from the definition of a packet processing pipeline written in P4.
  • 12:10 – 1:30pm
    • Lunch
  • 1:30 – 3:00pm
    • Monitoring and DebuggingInstructor: Mina Tahmasbi Arashloo (Princeton University)Session 3 will focus on a set of labs related to network monitoring and debugging. In this session, students will gain a deeper understanding of P4 language concepts, including custom headers and intrinsic metadata. In the first exercise, students will implement Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to set a congestion bit in a packet header when the queue depth exceeds a threshold. In the second exercise, MRI, students will implement a simplified version of In-Band Network Telemetry to track the path that packets travel through the network.
  • 3:00 – 3:30pm
    • Break
  • 3:50 – 5:00pm
    • Advanced Data StructuresInstructor: Sean Choi (Stanford University)Session 4 covers advanced data structures. In this session, students will implement two data-plane applications. In the first, source routing, end-hosts specify paths through the network by using a stack of labels in the packet header. The switch must “pop” each label and forward out the appropriate interface. In the second, students will implement a network calculator. Packets containing arithmetic expressions are sent to a switch. The switch will evaluate the expressions, and return the results back to the sender.