OpenINT: Dynamic In-band Network Telemetry with Lightweight Deployment and Flexible Planning

The normal operation of data center network management tasks relies on accurate measurement of the network status. In-band Network Telemetry (INT) leverages programmable data planes to provide fine-grained and accurate network status. However, existing INT-related works have not considered the telemetry data required for dynamic adjustments of INT under uninterrupted conditions, including additions, deletions, and modifications. To address this issue, this paper proposes OpenINT, a lightweight and flexible In-band Network Telemetry system. The key innovation of OpenINT lies in decoupling telemetry operations in the data plane, using three generic sub-modules to achieve lightweight telemetry. Meanwhile, the control plane utilizes heuristic algorithms for dynamic planning to achieve near-optimal telemetry paths. Additionally, OpenINT provides primitives for defining network measurement tasks, which abstract the underlying telemetry architecture’s details, enabling network operator to conveniently access network status. A prototype of OpenINT is implemented on a programmable switch equipped with the Tofino chip. Experimental results demonstrate that OpenINT achieves highly flexible dynamic telemetry and significantly reduces network overhead.