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A Framework for Comparative Evaluation of High-Performance Virtualized Networking Mechanisms

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Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER 2020)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1399))

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Abstract

This paper presents an extension to a software framework designed to evaluate the efficiency of different software and hardware-accelerated virtual switches, each commonly adopted on Linux to provide virtual network connectivity to containers in high-performance scenarios, like in Network Function Virtualization (NFV). We present results from the use of our tools, showing the performance of multiple high-performance networking frameworks on a specific platform, comparing the collected data for various key metrics, namely throughput, latency and scalability, with respect to the required computational power.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    OS containers in Linux achieve isolation employing cgroups and namespaces. With these tools, virtual Ethernet ports assigned to a container will no longer be visible or accessible outside the assigned cgroup/namespace, but it will still be part of the host network stack. In this sense, OS containers do not introduce any overhead when encapsulated applications exchange packets over the virtual network.

  2. 2.

    However, data copies across multiple processes are still required for security reasons, especially when interacting components do not trust each other, like VNFs.

  3. 3.

    https://github.com/luigirizzo/netmap.

  4. 4.

    https://www.dpdk.org/.

  5. 5.

    https://doc.dpdk.org/guides/sample_app_ug/skeleton.html.

  6. 6.

    https://www.openvswitch.org.

  7. 7.

    https://fd.io/.

  8. 8.

    https://github.com/snabbco/snabb.

  9. 9.

    The Basic Forwarding Sample Application does not implement any switching logic, while Snabb was not compatible with our selected SR-IOV Ethernet controller.

  10. 10.

    This limitation corresponds to the processing power reserved for each worker thread they spawn for software virtual switches, while for SR-IOV devices, it is an intrinsic characteristic of their hardware implementation.

  11. 11.

    http://www.rdmaconsortium.org.

  12. 12.

    https://www.ntop.org/products/packet-capture/pf_ring/.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank professor Giuseppe Lettieri from the University of Pisa for the timely help provided during the integration of Netmap in the framework.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy

    Gabriele Ara, Leonardo Lai, Tommaso Cucinotta & Luca Abeni

  2. Ericsson, Stockholm, Sweden

    Carlo Vitucci

Authors
  1. Gabriele Ara
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  2. Leonardo Lai
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  3. Tommaso Cucinotta
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  4. Luca Abeni
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  5. Carlo Vitucci
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gabriele Ara .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Columbia University, New York, USA

    Donald Ferguson

  2. Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy

    Claus Pahl

  3. Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland

    Markus Helfert

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Ara, G., Lai, L., Cucinotta, T., Abeni, L., Vitucci, C. (2021). A Framework for Comparative Evaluation of High-Performance Virtualized Networking Mechanisms. In: Ferguson, D., Pahl, C., Helfert, M. (eds) Cloud Computing and Services Science. CLOSER 2020. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1399. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72369-9_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72369-9_3

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