Blink - Fast Connectivity Recovery Entirely in the Data Plane

Explore a groundbreaking approach to fast network rerouting using programmable switches in this conference talk from NSDI '19. Discover how Blink, a data-driven system, leverages TCP-induced signals to detect failures and recover connectivity entirely in the data plane. Learn about the key intuition behind Blink's ability to analyze TCP flows at line rate, select flows to track, quickly detect major traffic disruptions, and recover data-plane connectivity while adhering to operator policies. Examine the end-to-end implementation of Blink in P4 and its extensive evaluation on real and synthetic traffic traces. Gain insights into Blink's capabilities, including sub-second rerouting for realistic Internet traffic, prevention of unnecessary traffic shifts, and scalability to protect large fractions of Internet traffic on existing hardware. Understand the feasibility of Blink through its demonstration on a real Tofino switch.