From RAD Lab

A Policy-aware Switching Layer for Data Centers

In today's datacenters, middleboxes like firewalls and load-balancers are deployed on the physical network path taken by packets. This on-path placement of middleboxes makes the networks hard to manage and configure. Since packets are not explicitly sent to middleboxes, network failures may cause some packets to bypass crucial middleboxes (e.g., firewalls), which in turn may compromise data center security. In this project, we will design and build a policy-aware switching layer that enables flexible off-path placement of middleboxes in a data center. The policy-aware switching layer guarantees that packets obey application policy by explicitly redirecting packets through the required middleboxes.

[Technical Report]