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PLAN 1.0 Release
PLAN
A Programming Language for Active Networks
We would like to announce the release of version 1.0 of PLAN
(Programming Language for Active Networks).
PLAN is a small functional scripting language that is intended to be
carried in communication packets and evaluated on routers in an active
network. Its primary goal is to support
1. finding, installing, and invoking services, and
2. diagnostics for routers and the network
with authentication only on services that require it. PLAN programs
are guaranteed to terminate and have predictable behavior over a
limited safe interface. PLAN programs with this limited interface can
therefore be interpreted by all active routers to all active packets.
PLAN programs may also access libraries of other services that may not
be provided to all packets, based on authorization.
PLAN 1.0 is our first experimental prototype release, implementing
some of the basic functionality expected of PLAN. Documents and
software on PLAN 1.0 can be found off the PLAN web site:
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~switchware/PLAN/
In particular, the design philosophy of PLAN and illustrative examples
from PLAN 1.0 can be found in our white paper:
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~switchware/papers/wp.ps.Z
The PLAN 1.0 interpreter is implemented in Pizza (an extension of Java
that provides functional programming) and will run on machines that
support JDK 1.1. We have a small PLAN 1.0 active network running and
encourage you to send some active packets or even to start a PLAN node
that we can add to our network.
More general material on active networks (including links to
RFC's and other approaches) can be found through the SwitchWare
web site:
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~switchware
Carl A. Gunter
Mike Hicks
Pankaj Kakkar
Jonathan Moore
Scott Nettles
Sam Weber