German Bachelor thesis for easier getting-into-P4

Getting Started with P4
1

Hi guys,

I acquired my Bachelor of Engineering in Information- and Communication Engineering last week :slight_smile: My thesis was about P4 and connected to a research program at HTW Berlin. The thesis gives a summary of the following things:

  • little history
  • goals + prospects (including a self-designed header for cloning)
  • functional principle (bmv2 + tna, control blocks, mirroring, data types)
  • 6 exercices on the P4-VM with Mininet + BMv2
  • 3 exercices on TNA/Tofino/Edge-Core Wedge 100BF-32X
  • porting code from bmv2 to tna
  • some testing with iperf, icmp, scapy

My main goal was making it easier for people to get into P4. I worked some years as an sys-admin, so I had a good background concerning switched networks, but yet had tough times at the beginning working with P4.
The thing is: the thesis is only available in german atm. Translating into english would be possible if there’s demand.
But never the less I wanted to ask, where to upload the thesis. Thought about here and the Intel Connectivity Research Program. Suggestions are welcome :slight_smile:
The code for the exercices is in a git repo on some university servers. I’m checking how to make it public accessible atm.

Best regards
Marcel Beausencourt

2

Do you have a link to your Bachelor’s thesis? I speak German, so I can take a look. :slight_smile:

One thing you could do is contribute your non-Tofino exercises and tutorials to GitHub - p4lang/tutorials: P4 language tutorials, which would make them more widely accessible.

3

Hey fruffy,

Vladimir told me to send it to ICRP for checking the Intel related stuff for confidentiality. Once its through this process I will send you the thesis or upload it public so you can access it :slight_smile:
Thanks for the advice with the exercices in the virtual environment!

Best regards
Marcel

4

Hey people,

I received the OK to upload the thesis. I will send a link once I’ve decided where to upload :slight_smile:

Best regards
Marcel

5

Hey fruffy,

you can access the thesis on my git repo that I uploaded yesterday. So much to do haha.
Here’s the link to the thesis:

I hope I will find time to translate it to english this year!

Best regards und schönen Abend :wink:
Marcel

6

Great, I will give this a read! :slight_smile: