T4G

Trace-based P4 Program Generation

Conference Paper (2026)
Author(s)

Chenxing Ji (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)

Timo Jugariu (Student TU Delft)

Sebastijan Dumancic (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)

Fernando Kuipers (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)

Research Group
Networked Systems
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.1109/INFOCOM59046.2026.11571581 Final published version
More Info
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Publication Year
2026
Language
English
Research Group
Networked Systems
Publisher
IEEE
ISBN (electronic)
9798331549619
Event
2026 IEEE Conference on Computer Communications, INFOCOM 2026 (2026-05-18 - 2026-05-21), Tokyo, Japan
Page Views
12
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Abstract

While the adoption of programmable data planes is increasing, writing correct and efficient P4 programs remains a challenging and error-prone process. This hinders the rapid development of custom in-network functionality and limits the accessibility of data-plane programming to a small set of experts. In this paper, we present T4G, a system that automatically synthesizes P4 programs from network behavior expressed as input-output network traces. Unlike prior approaches that rely on high-level abstraction or domain-specific languages, T4G operates with example packet captures, eliminating the need for manual abstraction or rule specifications from network operators. T4G introduces a novel input-output grouping technique that identifies logical packet transformation behavior from packet traces, and performs a divide-and-conquer synthesis that scales to complex forwarding logic. Our experimental results show the ability of T4G to generate different types of programs and demonstrate the potential of T4G in generating complex P4 programs.

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