P4Timely: Evaluating Time Synchronization Resilience in Programmable Networks

Accurate time synchronization is essential for emerging networked applications that demand low latency, high precision, and coordinated operations, such as those found in data centers, time-sensitive networking (TSN), and distributed systems. In this demo, we introduce P4Timely, a flexible and programmable framework designed to evaluate and prototype time synchronization protocols in real time. Built using P4 and commodity programmable hardware, P4Timely enables users to easily configure synchronization settings through a simple interface, specify network conditions such as delay, jitter, and packet loss, and define whether nodes act as synchronizing or synchronized entities. P4Timely supports dynamic reconfiguration at runtime and provides built-in monitoring tools to assess synchronization accuracy under diverse network conditions.