Team for Research in
Ubiquitous Secure Technology

Citation
Hakim Weatherspoon. "SoNIC: Precise Realtime Software Access and Control of Wired Networks". Talk or presentation, 9, October, 2013.

Abstract
The physical and data link layers of the network stack contain valuable information. Unfortunately, a systems programmer would never know. These two layers are often inaccessible in software and much of their potential goes untapped. In this paper we introduce SoNIC, Software-defined Network Interface Card, which provides access to the physical and data link layers in software by implementing them in software. In other words, by implementing the creation of the physical layer bitstream in software and the transmission of this bitstream in hardware, SoNIC provides complete control over the entire network stack in realtime. SoNIC utilizes commodity off-the-shelf multi-core processors to implement parts of the physical layer in software, and employs an FPGA board to transmit optical signal over the wire. Our evaluations demonstrate that SoNIC can communicate with other network components while providing realtime access to the entire network stack in software. As an example of SoNIC’s fine-granularity control, it can perform precise network measurements, accurately characterizing network components such as routers, switches, and network interface cards. Further, SoNIC enables timing channels with nanosecond modulations that are undetectable in software.

Electronic downloads

• Weatherspoon_2013_fa_TRUST.pptx · application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.pre · 2261 kbytes

• HTML

  Hakim Weatherspoon. <a
  href="http://www.truststc.org/pubs/916.html"
  ><i>SoNIC: Precise Realtime Software Access and
  Control of Wired Networks</i></a>, Talk or
  presentation,  9, October, 2013.

• Plain text

  Hakim Weatherspoon. "SoNIC: Precise Realtime Software
  Access and Control of Wired Networks". Talk or
  presentation,  9, October, 2013.

• BibTeX

  @presentation{Weatherspoon13_SoNICPreciseRealtimeSoftwareAccessControlOfWiredNetworks,
      author = {Hakim Weatherspoon},
      title = {SoNIC: Precise Realtime Software Access and
                Control of Wired Networks},
      day = {9},
      month = {October},
      year = {2013},
      abstract = {The physical and data link layers of the network
                stack contain valuable information. Unfortunately,
                a systems programmer would never know. These two
                layers are often inaccessible in software and much
                of their potential goes untapped. In this paper we
                introduce SoNIC, Software-defined Network
                Interface Card, which provides access to the
                physical and data link layers in software by
                implementing them in software. In other words, by
                implementing the creation of the physical layer
                bitstream in software and the transmission of this
                bitstream in hardware, SoNIC provides complete
                control over the entire network stack in realtime.
                SoNIC utilizes commodity off-the-shelf multi-core
                processors to implement parts of the physical
                layer in software, and employs an FPGA board to
                transmit optical signal over the wire. Our
                evaluations demonstrate that SoNIC can communicate
                with other network components while providing
                realtime access to the entire network stack in
                software. As an example of SoNIC’s
                fine-granularity control, it can perform precise
                network measurements, accurately characterizing
                network components such as routers, switches, and
                network interface cards. Further, SoNIC enables
                timing channels with nanosecond modulations that
                are undetectable in software.},
      URL = {http://www.truststc.org/pubs/916.html}
  }
  

Posted by Carolyn Winter on 13 Nov 2013.
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