Comment by antithesis-nl
Comment by antithesis-nl 2 days ago
As far as I can tell, Software Defined Networking (which this is about: "P4 is a domain-specific language for network devices") by now is pretty much a decade-old promise that never materialized. I'd still love to be wrong though!
So, let's take the next paragraph: "Before P4, vendors had total control over the functionality supported in the network (...) controlled the rollout of new features (e.g., VXLAN), and rollouts took years"
Anyone has a pointer to any actually available hardware capable of L2 and L3 packet processing where I could have implemented VXLAN in, say, weeks using P4? Again, as far as I can tell, it's all either killed-off-a-long-time-ago, "contact us" vaporware, or exotic 40/100-Gb-only Top-o-Rack gear, and even for those, there is nary an "add to cart" button in sight...
P4 is used by Cisco Silicon One, Xsight, AMD Pensando, Intel Mount Evans, etc. "Contact us" isn't the same thing as vaporware; the Pensando SSDK and Intel ES2K SDE definitely exist for example. I realize it sucks when things aren't available to hobbyists but it's a mistake to pretend it's fake.
P4 is really only needed in data center networks because slower campus/home networks can usually get away with software processing and their lower prices probably can't support the R&D of a programmable architecture.