CoEM: A Software and Hardware Co-design Event Management System for Middlebox

Stateful middleboxes play a very important role in the security and performance of the network. However, they mostly exist as separate devices in network and distributed in different topological nodes. By analyzing the packet processing of these middleboxes, we find that they have many common functions, such as the management of the flow states, the parsing of the packet protocol. The redundant development of these functions not only causes great waste of human and material resources, but also involves relevant expertise, which is extremely error-prone.