AI-Driven Packet Forwarding With Programmable Data Plane: A Survey

The existing packet forwarding technology cannot meet the increasing requirements of Internet development due to its rigid framework. Application of artificial intelligence (AI) for efficient packet forwarding is gaining more and more interest as a new direction. Recently, the explosive development of programmable data plane (PDP) has provided a potential impetus to packet forwarding driven by AI. Therefore, this paper presents a survey on the recent research in AI-driven packet forwarding with PDP. First, we describe two of the most representative frameworks of the packet forwarding, i.e., the traditional AI-driven forwarding framework and the new one assisted by the PDP. Then, we focus on capacity of the packet forwarding under the two frameworks in four measures: delay, throughput, security, and reliability. For each measure, we organize the content with the evolution from simple packet forwarding, to packet forwarding capacity enhancement with the assistance of AI, to the latest research on AI-driven packet forwarding supported by the PDP. Finally, we identify three directions in the development of AI-driven packet forwarding, and highlight the challenges and issues in future research.