rrBox: A Remote Dynamically Reconfigurable Middlebox for Network Protection

This paper presents a remote dynamically reconfigurable middle box for network protection by using Net FPGA 10G development board. The packet for wading and other network processing components in this middle box can be updated remotely through the 1Gbps Ethernet connection without assistance from a host computer. Functional update is important to patch design flaws and bugs, to optimize design performance, and to cope with the changes on the functions of execution unit. In addition, this work demonstrates the use of the developed platform for network protection. The proposed architecture uses a customized reconfiguration controller and the Internal Configuration Access Port available in the reconfigurable device. Based on the experimental result, the implemented middle box achieved roughly 352Mbps reconfiguration throughput, which is important for mass updating the distributed middle boxes and decrease the devices down time during the updates.