Overview

The languages used to program networks today lack modern features. Programming them is a complicated and error-prone task, and outages and infiltrations are frequent. We believe it is time to develop network programming languages with the following essential features:

• High-level abstractions that give programmers direct control over the network, allowing them to specify what they want the network to do without worrying about how to implement it.
• Modular constructs that facilitate compositional reasoning about programs.
• Portability, allowing programs written for one platform to be reused with different devices.
• Rigorous semantic foundations that precisely document the meaning of the language and provide a solid platform for mechanical program analysis tools.

The Frenetic language addresses these challenges in the context of OpenFlow networks. It combines a streaming declarative query sub-language and a functional reactive sub-language that, together, provide many of the features listed above. Our prototype implementation handles many low-level packet-processing details and keeps traffic in the "fast path" whenever possible.