Date of publication xxxx 00, 0000, date of current version xxxx 00, 0000. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2017.DOI An Exhaustive Survey on P4 Programmable Data Plane Switches: Taxonomy, Applications, Challenges, and Future Trends ELIE F. KFOURY1, (Student Member, IEEE), JORGE CRICHIGNO1, (Member, IEEE) AND ELIAS BOU-HARB2, (Member, IEEE) 1College of Engineering and Computing, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29201 USA (e-mail:
[email protected],
[email protected]) 2The Cyber Center For Security and Analytics, University of Texas at San Antonio, TX 78249 USA, CO 80523 USA (e-mail:
[email protected]) Corresponding author: Elie F. Kfoury (e-mail:
[email protected]). This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant numbers 1925484 and 1829698, funded by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC). ABSTRACT Traditionally, the data plane has been designed with fixed functions to forward packets using a small set of protocols. This closed-design paradigm has limited the capability of the switches to proprietary implementations which are hard-coded by vendors, inducing a lengthy, costly, and inflexible process. Recently, data plane programmability has attracted significant attention from both the research community and the industry, permitting operators and programmers in general to run customized packet processing functions. This open-design paradigm is paving the way for an unprecedented wave of innovation and experimentation by reducing the time of designing, testing, and adopting new protocols; enabling a customized, top-down approach to develop network applications; providing granular visibility of packet events defined by the programmer; reducing complexity and enhancing resource utilization of the programmable switches; and drastically improving the performance of applications that are offloaded to the data plane.