StreaMon: A Data-Plane Programming Abstraction for Software-Defined Stream Monitoring

The fast evolving nature of modern cyber threats and network monitoring needs calls for new, "software-defined", approaches to simplify and quicken programming and deployment of online (stream-based) traffic analysis functions. StreaMon is a carefully designed data-plane abstraction devised to scalably decouple the "programming logic" of a traffic analysis application (tracked states, features, anomaly conditions, etc.) from elementary primitives (counting and metering, matching, events generation, etc), efficiently pre-implemented in the probes, and used as common instruction set for supporting the desired logic. Multi-stage multi-step real-time tracking and detection algorithms are supported via the ability to deploy custom states, relevant state transitions, and associated monitoring actions and triggering conditions. Such a separation entails platform-independent, portable, online traffic analysis tasks written in a high level language, without requiring developers to access the monitoring device internals and program their custom monitoring logic via low level compiled languages (e.g., C, assembly, VHDL). We validate our design by developing a prototype and a set of simple (but functionally demanding) use-case applications and by testing them over real traffic traces.