P4 (Programming Protocol-Independent Packet Processors) is a programming language used to define packet forwarding behavior
It was created in 2013 by the P4 Language Consortium, a non-profit organization formed by a group of engineers and researchers from Google, Intel, Microsoft Research, Barefoot Networks, Princeton and Stanford. They required an industry-standard open programming language, so they developed P4, which is easy to learn and can be used to precisely define how packets are being forwarded within the network infrastructure. Since then, P4 was rapidly adopted by market leaders and gained strong support, in particular among the data center and telecommunications industry.
P4 Applications and Use Cases
P4 can be implemented in an SDN environment to examine the forwarding behavior, associate user-defined keys with actions, or add information to the packets
Download short summary on P4
You will find a detailed overview of the various applications and use cases of P4 in the following PDF file
Download P4 Summary
How to learn programming in P4?
STORDIS provides P4 courses suitable for designers and architects, focussing on design and development of data plane and control plane programs for modern networking equipment
Get started with P4
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