arXiv subjects

Kimiya Mohammadtaheri

Publications and source records attributed to Kimiya Mohammadtaheri.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Transport Programs: Specifying The Missing Layer Between Protocols and Stacks

Running code has long served two roles in transport protocol design: a medium for protocol development and a precise behavioral specification. Modern stacks increasingly struggle to serve either role because protocol logic is interwoven with platform-specific machinery for high performance. Changing or comparing protocol behavior therefore requires deep stack expertise, hindering protocol evolution and obscuring interoperability problems. We propose transport programs, a specification layer between natural-language protocol standards and stack implementations. Written in MTP, a stack-independent language, these programs state protocol decisions precisely while leaving execution machinery to each stack. MTP provides an explicit interface between protocol and stack experts: transport programs can run on MTP-compatible stacks, describe existing fixed-function implementations for behavioral comparison, and structure tasks for AI agents. We demonstrate MTP's benefits with three MTP-compatible stacks, two software and an FPGA prototype, on which we run programs for TCP, Homa, lightweight QUIC, and RoCEv2, comparing MTP descriptions of two TCP stacks to reveal interoperability issues, and creating an MTP-structured agentic pipeline that derives from RFCs a TCP MTP program that interoperates with NS3's TCP.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2026

A Protocol-Independent Transport Architecture

The network transport layer is increasingly implemented in the NIC hardware to meet the performance demands of modern workloads, but this has made it difficult to evolve or deploy new transport protocols. Existing approaches either fix protocol logic in the data-path or build protocol-specific assumptions into the architecture that limit the range of protocols that can be supported on a single hardware substrate. We present PITA, a protocol-independent transport architecture that enables full data-path programmability while sustaining line-rate performance. PITA eliminates protocol-specific assumptions by structuring the data-path around a uniform abstraction over events, state, and instructions, and rethinks core components, including scheduling, packet generation, and data reassembly, to operate on this abstraction. We evaluate PITA along key dimensions reflecting the goals of its protocol-agnostic datapath design. Specifically, we show that PITA supports diverse protocol semantics by showing it can implement TCP and \roce on the same data path and preserve their distinct end-to-end behavior. Through targeted microbenchmarks and synthesis on Alveo U250 cards, we show that PITA's redesigned components sustain high performance under demanding conditions, with modest hardware overhead and meeting timing at 250MHz.

cs.NI↗