Distributed Consensus Protocols in Programmable Data Planes for Ultra-Fast Network State Synchronization

While programmable data planes are increasingly intelligent (as Spina et al. demonstrate in distributed intrusion prevention), coordination between switches remains a bottleneck—often relegated to slower control planes. Inspired by distributed systems (Aguaded et al.), this research would adapt consensus techniques like Paxos/Raft for in-switch execution, allowing switches to rapidly agree on network state, such as active flowlets, congestion hot spots, or detected anomalies. By using programmable match-action logic for message passing and state transitions, this could dramatically lower the latency of coordination, enabling new classes of real-time network applications (e.g., collaborative DDoS defense, microsecond-scale failover). The key innovation is rethinking distributed consensus as a first-class, programmable data plane primitive—not just a control plane function.

References:

1. Distributing Intelligence in 6G Programmable Data Planes for Effective In-Network Intrusion Prevention. M. G. Spina, F. De Rango, Edoardo Scalzo, Francesca Guerriero, Antonio Iera (2024). IEEE Network.
2. Enabling P4 Hands-on Training in an Academic Cloud. Ignacio Aguaded, Elie F. Kfoury, J. Crichigno (2022). International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems.