Yang Zhang
Bilal Anwer
ABSTRACT
Service Function Chains (SFCs) comprise a sequence of Network Functions (NFs) that are typically traversed in-order by data flows. Consequently, SFC delay grows linearly with the length of the SFC. Yet, for highly latency sensitive applications, this delay may be unacceptable---particularly when the constituent NFs are virtualized, running on commodity servers. In this paper, we investigate how SFC latency may be reduced by exploiting opportunities for parallel packet processing across NFs. We propose ParaBox, a novel hybrid packet processing architecture that, when possible, dynamically distributes packets to VNFs in parallel and merges their outputs intelligently to ensure the preservation of correct sequential processing semantics. To demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, we implement a ParaBox prototype on top of the DPDK-enabled Berkeley Extensible Software Switch. Our preliminary experiment results show that ParaBox can not only significantly reduce the service chaining latency, but also improve throughput.
- AT&T Universal Customer Premises Equipment (uCPE). https://www.business.att.com/content/productbrochures/universal-customer-premises-equipment-brief.pdf, 2016.Google Scholar
- Berkeley Extensible Software Switch. http://span.cs.berkeley.edu/bess.html, 2016.Google Scholar
- Cisco's Vector Packet Processing. https://wiki.fd.io/view/VPP, 2016.Google Scholar
- DPDK. http://dpdk.org/, 2016.Google Scholar
- DPDK OVS. https://clearlinux.org/documentation/ac-ovs-dpdk.html, 2016.Google Scholar
- B. Anwer, T. Benson, N. Feamster, and D. Levin. Programming Slick Network Functions. In Proc. SOSR, 2015. Google ScholarDigital Library
- P. Bosshart, D. Daly, G. Gibb, M. Izzard, N. McKeown, J. Rexford, C. Schlesinger, D. Talayco, A. Vahdat, G. Varghese, and D. Walker. P4: Programming Protocol-Independent Packet Processors. In SIGCOMM CCR, 2014.Google ScholarDigital Library
- A. Bremler-Barr, Y. Harchol, and D. Hay. OpenBox: A Software-Defined Framework for Developing, Deploying, and Managing Network Functions. In Proc. SIGCOMM, 2016. Google ScholarDigital Library
- J. Dean and S. Ghemawat. MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters. In Proc. OSDI, 2004.Google ScholarDigital Library
- S. K. Fayazbakhsh, L. Chiang, V. Sekar, M. Yu, and J. C. Mogul. Enforcing Network-Wide Policies in the Presence of Dynamic Middlebox Actions using FlowTags. In Proc. NSDI, 2014.Google ScholarDigital Library
- A. Gember-Jacobson, R. Viswanathan, C. Prakash, R. Grandl, J. Khalid, S. Das, and A. Akella. OpenNF: Enabling Innovation in Network Function Control. In Proc. SIGCOMM, 2014. Google ScholarDigital Library
- R. Grandl, S. Kandula, S. Rao, A. Akella, and J. Kulkarni. GRAPHENE: Packing and Dependency-Aware Scheduling for Data-Parallel Clusters. In Proc. OSDI, 2016.Google Scholar
- W. Haeffner, J. Napper, M. Stiemerling, D. R. Lopez, and J. Uttaro. Service Function Chaining Use Cases in Mobile Networks. Internet-Draft draft-haeffner-sfc-use-case-mobility-02, IETF, 2014.Google Scholar
- J. M. Halpern and C. Pignataro. Service Function Chaining (SFC) Architecture. RFC 7665, 2015.Google Scholar
- B. Han, V. Gopalakrishnan, L. Ji, and S. Lee. Network function virtualization: Challenges and opportunities for innovations. In IEEE Communications Magazine, 2015.Google ScholarCross Ref
- C. Henke, C. Schmoll, and T. Zseby. Empirical Evaluation of Hash Functions for Multipoint Measurements. In SIGCOMM CCR, 2008. Google ScholarDigital Library
- J. L. Hennessy and D. A. Patterson. Computer architecture: a quantitative approach. Elsevier, 2011.Google ScholarDigital Library
- M. Honda, F. Huici, G. Lettieri, and L. Rizzo. mSwitch: A Highly-Scalable, Modular Software Switch. In Proc. SOSR, 2015. Google ScholarDigital Library
- J. Hwang, K. K. Ramakrishnan, and T. Wood. NetVM: High Performance and Flexible Networking Using Virtualization on Commodity Platforms. In Proc. NSDI, 2014.Google Scholar
- D. Joseph and I. Stoica. Modeling middleboxes. IEEE Network: The Magazine of Global Internetworking, 2008.Google Scholar
- D. A. Joseph, A. Tavakoli, and I. Stoica. A Policy-aware Switching Layer for Data Centers. In Proc. SIGCOMM, 2008. Google ScholarDigital Library
- S. Kumar, M. Tufail, S. Majee, C. Captari, and S. Homma. Service Function Chaining Use Cases In Data Centers. Internet-Draft draft-ietf-sfc-dc-use-cases-06, IETF, Feb. 2017.Google Scholar
- B. Li, K. Tan, L. L. Luo, Y. Peng, R. Luo, N. Xu, Y. Xiong, P. Cheng, and E. Chen. ClickNP: Highly Flexible and High Performance Network Processing with Reconfigurable Hardware. In Proc. SIGCOMM, 2016. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Z. Li, M. Zhang, Z. Zhu, Y. Chen, A. Greenberg, and Y. Wang. WebProphet: Automating Performance Prediction for Web Services. In Proc. NSDI, 2010.Google Scholar
- J. Martins, M. Ahmed, C. Raiciu, V. Olteanu, M. Honda, R. Bifulco, and F. Huici. ClickOS and the Art of Network Function Virtualization. In Proc. NSDI 14, 2014.Google Scholar
- T. Nadeau and P. Quinn. Problem Statement for Service Function Chaining. RFC 7498, 2015.Google Scholar
- S. Palkar, C. Lan, S. Han, K. Jang, A. Panda, S. Ratnasamy, L. Rizzo, and S. Shenker. E2: A Framework for NFV Applications. In Proc. SOSP, 2015. Google ScholarDigital Library
- C. Prakash, J. Lee, Y. Turner, J.-M. Kang, A. Akella, S. Banerjee, C. Clark, Y. Ma, P. Sharma, and Y. Zhang. PGA: Using Graphs to Express and Automatically Reconcile Network Policies. In Proc. SIGCOMM, 2015. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Z. A. Qazi, C.-C. Tu, L. Chiang, R. Miao, V. Sekar, and M. Yu. SIMPLE-fying Middlebox Policy Enforcement Using SDN. In Proc. SIGCOMM, 2013. Google ScholarDigital Library
- P. Quinn and U. Elzur. Network Service Header. Internet-Draft draft-ietf-sfc-nsh-10, IETF, 2016.Google Scholar
- S. Rajagopalan, D.Williams, H. Jamjoom, and A. Warfield. Split/Merge: System Support for Elastic Execution in Virtual Middleboxes. In Proc. NSDI, 2013.Google ScholarDigital Library
- M. Walfish, J. Stribling, M. Krohn, H. Balakrishnan, R. Morris, and S. Shenker. Middleboxes No Longer Considered Harmful. In Proc. OSDI, 2004.Google ScholarDigital Library
- X. S. Wang, A. Balasubramanian, A. Krishnamurthy, and D. Wetherall. Demystifying Page Load Performance with WProf. In Proc. NSDI, 2013.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Y. Zhang, N. Beheshti, L. Beliveau, G. Lefebvret, R. Manghirmalani, R. Mishra, R. Patney, M. Shirazipour, R. Subrahmaniam, C. Truchan, and M. Tatipamula. StEERING: A software-defined networking for inline service chaining. In Proc. ICNP, 2013. Google ScholarCross Ref
- ParaBox: Exploiting Parallelism for Virtual Network Functions in Service Chaining
Recommendations
A survey on service function chaining
Cloud computing is gaining significant attention and virtualized datacenters are becoming popular as a cost-effective infrastructure. The network services are transitioning from a host-centric to a data-centric model moving the data and the ...
Scalable and coordinated allocation of service function chains
Network Functions Virtualization is an emerging initiative where standard IT virtualization evolves to consolidate network functions onto high volume servers, switches and storage that can be located anywhere in the network. In NFV, network services are ...
Adaptive service function selection for Network Function Virtualization networking
AbstractIn multiple Service Nodes (SNs) in a Network Function Virtualization (NFV) environment, numerous network functions are carried out. This study concerns the selection of Service Function Instances (SFIs) that are integrated into a ...
Highlights- Based on NFV with SFC system architecture is designed and SFC conceptual architecture are combined.
Comments