Sapient

The goal of Sapient is to improve the performance of networked applications by manipulating network traffic. Sapient studies the requirements of different network applications and attempts to shape traffic such that those requirements are met. Sapient is composed of several parts; network traffic manipulators that enforce constraints on a per-flow basis, network application detectors that label which traffic belongs to which application, network sensors that identify the status and quality of network links, and an overall manager that attempts to learn traffic patterns and predict periodic outages and problems with the links managed by Sapient. The goal of Sapient is to be a "black-box" that can be dropped into an existing network. Sapient can support an open network, meaning it does not assume that all traffic can be managed and accepts a level of cross-traffic.