NODE: Network Wide Top-K Flows in the Data Plane

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Stein, Eitan, Zeno, Lior, Feibish, Shir Landau
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Stein, Eitan
Zeno, Lior
Feibish, Shir Landau
author_facet Stein, Eitan
Zeno, Lior
Feibish, Shir Landau
contents Monitoring network traffic is crucial for most network tasks, such as, identifying and blocking attacks, pinpointing failures and engineering and rerouting heavy traffic to maintain high throughput. One important metric when monitoring the traffic is finding the top-k heavy flows, that is the k heaviest flows in the traffic. Programmable networks allow performing advanced network analysis right in the data plane. In recent years, various solutions have been proposed for efficiently finding the top-k heavy flows within a single switch. However, at times we may need to find the global top-k flows. Existing solutions for global top-k detection use a centralized controller that collects and aggregates the measurements performed in each of the switches. Yet, the process of sending information to the control plane and then having the controller send back the information to the switches can be very lengthy. In order to be able to detect and mitigate short-lived events, solutions that work completely within the data plane are needed. In this paper we present NODE, a network-wide top-k detection algorithm that operates exclusively in the data plane. NODE allows the switches to aggregate information from all other switches in the network, and ensures that eventually all switches hold an identical global top-k table. We show that NODE manages to detect global top-k flows on both synthetic and real traces, with a recall rate of over 95\% while using less than 300KB per switch.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_23778
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle NODE: Network Wide Top-K Flows in the Data Plane
Stein, Eitan
Zeno, Lior
Feibish, Shir Landau
Networking and Internet Architecture
Monitoring network traffic is crucial for most network tasks, such as, identifying and blocking attacks, pinpointing failures and engineering and rerouting heavy traffic to maintain high throughput. One important metric when monitoring the traffic is finding the top-k heavy flows, that is the k heaviest flows in the traffic. Programmable networks allow performing advanced network analysis right in the data plane. In recent years, various solutions have been proposed for efficiently finding the top-k heavy flows within a single switch. However, at times we may need to find the global top-k flows. Existing solutions for global top-k detection use a centralized controller that collects and aggregates the measurements performed in each of the switches. Yet, the process of sending information to the control plane and then having the controller send back the information to the switches can be very lengthy. In order to be able to detect and mitigate short-lived events, solutions that work completely within the data plane are needed. In this paper we present NODE, a network-wide top-k detection algorithm that operates exclusively in the data plane. NODE allows the switches to aggregate information from all other switches in the network, and ensures that eventually all switches hold an identical global top-k table. We show that NODE manages to detect global top-k flows on both synthetic and real traces, with a recall rate of over 95\% while using less than 300KB per switch.
title NODE: Network Wide Top-K Flows in the Data Plane
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.23778