Network monitoring now is limited because of the number of servers it takes to deal with the large influx of router data. Router manufacturers have been attempting to combat this by adding counters to the routers that report on the number of data packets a router has processed during some time interval, but adding counters for every special task would be impractical and put more stress on servers since they would need thousands more to process the flood of data coming in. To combat this a system called Marple was created by researchers at MIT, Cisco Systems, and Barefoot Networks(Hardesty). Marple involves a programming language the allows network operators to specify a wide range of network-monitoring tasks and a small set of simple circuit elements that can execute any function specified in the language. This is important because it cuts the thousands of traffic servers and application servers to 40 to 50 application servers per traffic analysis server (Hardesty). Not only would this allow for a faster server to server process it would also save companies space and money. Marple is also being future proofed because the hardware and language were co-designed …show more content…
Not only will these innovations improve network strength, but possibly the speeds at which a client can access information from an application server. This has the potential to make cloud computing even more prevalent than it already is today because it would become easier to keep up with mass traffic to the servers. Large server banks would be able to be downsized slightly compared to their current sizes. The computer science techniques used in created Marple show that it is possible to even make an old process useful in modern applications. The hardware of Marple is also programmable making it extremely useful for any network engineers because they will be able to write custom software for Marple-based