A Zero Flow Entry Expiration Timeout P4 Switch

Abstract

Existing OpenFlow based flow expiry mechanisms rely on a fixed timeout after which the switch proactively removes the flow entries from its flow table. Assigning an appropriate value to this timeout presents a tradeoff between efficient flow table utilization and controller overhead.We propose a simple addition of a zero flow entry expiration timeout scheme to idle timeout mechanism on a P4 based switch that identifies the last packet of a TCP flow, and removes the corresponding flow entry from the flow table. It enables connections to be deleted from the flow table right after it finishes, instead of waiting to expire after it reaches the timeout threshold and causing unnecessary flow table occupation.