Aggregating multiple small packets into a large packet provides many advantages. For example, multiple small packets can share a single copy of common Ethernet/IP/UDP headers to reduce the percentage of network bandwidth spent on transmitting headers. In the past, packet aggregation and disaggregation were done by a server CPU or a switch CPU, resulting in low throughputs. In this paper, we design and implement packet aggregation and disaggregation functions in the packet processing pipelines of P4 switches. Our novel designs allow packets with various sizes of payload to be aggregated and disaggregated purely in the data plane of a P4 switch. Experimental results show that the achieved throughputs of our aggregation and disaggregation methods can reach 100 Gbps, which is the line rate of the used P4 switch.

将多个小数据包聚合为一个大数据包具有许多优势。例如，多个小数据包可以共享通用以太网/ IP / UDP标头的单个副本，以减少花费在发送标头上的网络带宽的百分比。过去，数据包的聚合和分解是由服务器CPU或交换CPU完成的，因此吞吐量较低。在本文中，我们在P4交换机的数据包处理管道中设计并实现了数据包聚合和分解功能。我们新颖的设计允许纯净大小的数据包在P4交换机的数据平面中进行聚合和分解。实验结果表明，我们的聚合和分解方法的吞吐量可以达到100 Gbps，这是所使用的P4交换机的线路速率。