PAN: A High-Performance Active Network Node Supporting Multiple Mobile Code Systems

A capsule-based active network transports capsules containing code to be executed on network nodes through which they pass. Active networks facilitate the deployment of new protocols, which can be used without any changes to the underlying network infrastructure. This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of a high-performance active network node which supports multiple mobile code systems. Experiments, using capsules executing unsafe native Intel ix86 object code, indicate that active networks may be able to provide significant flexibility relative to traditional networks with only a small performance overhead (as little as 13% for 1500 byte packets). However, capsules executing JavaVM code performed far worse (with over three times the performance overhead of native code for 128 byte packets), indicating that mobile code system performance is critical to overall node performance. Keywords—active networks, networking protocols, PAN, ANTS, performance, mobile code, Java, capsules, software segments.