FLICK: Developing and Running Application-Specific Network Services
This paper describes a system for middleboxes that process application level data -- that is reconstructed TCP flows not packets. The system consists of three parts:
1) A language specific to middleboxes that can quickly express data formats and how to process them but in a "safe" way that allows middleboxes to co-exist on the same physical hardware.
2) An abstraction, the task graph, that breaks middlebox logic into small, parallelisable logical units (tasks) connected by channels through which data flows.
3) A system that allows the compiled code to execute in a performant way.
This talk describes FLICK a system for the application-specific middlebox. It consists of three parts:
1) A domain specific language for the middlebox that allows easy development of typical middlebox functions.
2) An abstraction, the task graph, that allows the breaking of middlebox functions into easily parallelisable work units.
3) The system -- this implements the compiled language, handles TCP connections and memory management.
The whole system is comparable in speed to a specialist implementation.