4th GI/ITG KuVS Workshop on Network Softwarization (NetSoft)

The report was published in the KuVS Newsletter 2025-06.

The 4th GI/ITG KuVS Workshop on Network Softwarization (NetSoft) was organized by Sebastian Gallenmüller (TU Munich) and Michael Menth (Uni Tübingen) after editions in 2017, 2020, and 2022. It took place on April 3-4 2025 via Zoom. The workshop featured 8 sessions with 31 presentations; the program is available online: 

• Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) 

• 5G/6G Networking 

• Software-Based Packet Processing 

• P4 

• IETF: Energy Efficiency and Evolution of MPLS 

• New Hardware and Software for Data Plane Programming 

• Network Monitoring and Measurement Tools 

• Security 

The program included 20 original works and 11 invited talks. Seven minutes of extra time were allocated after each talk, which led to lively discussions due to the strong focus of the sessions. In addition to scientific results, new tools, teaching approaches, reports about new projects, IETF working groups, or mini-tutorials (MPLS Network Actions, SONiC) were presented. It turned out that many researchers are currently interested in testbeds for TSN networks. Therefore, a new mailing list has been provided to facilitate exchange on this topic: https: //listserv.uni-tuebingen.de/mailman/listinfo/kuvs-tsn-testbeds  

Intel Tofino is a popular ASIC for data plane programming. As it has reached its end of life, the first public announcement of the new P4-programmable ASIC ZenosIC Lanting was of particular interest for many researchers. Most slides and the accepted papers are available on the workshop website. Original works have been peer-reviewed and improved by a shepherding process if needed before being published by the TOBIAS-lib of the University of T̈ubingen. More than 100 participants were registered for the workshop and the sessions had 30-55 attendees, depending on the topic.

Michael Menth (University of Tübingen)