A state consistency framework leveraging packet cloning and piggybacking for programmable network data planes

The Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technology is a network management method that allows dynamic, programmatically efficient network planning to improve its performance and monitoring. Given that SDN at each passing day becomes more prominent, a framework that can ensure reliable communication and a global state among devices become more important. We propose a state consistency framework that leverages a state machine abstraction using network updates among adjacent switches through packet piggybacking. We also use a moving average that when a condition is met, P4's packet cloning is triggered, hence ensuring that all packets arrive at their destination in the presence of link failures.