Metron: High-performance NFV Service Chaining even in the Presence of BlackboxesShow others and affiliations
2021 (English)In: ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, ISSN 0734-2071, E-ISSN 1557-7333, Vol. 38, no 1-2, article id 3Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Deployment of 100Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) links challenges the packet processing limits of commodity hardware used for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). Moreover, realizing chained network functions (i.e., service chains) necessitates the use of multiple CPU cores, or even multiple servers, to process packets from such high speed links. Our system Metron jointly exploits the underlying network and commodity servers' resources: (i) to offload part of the packet processing logic to the network, (ii) by using smart tagging to setup and exploit the affinity of traffic classes, and (iii) by using tag-based hardware dispatching to carry out the remaining packet processing at the speed of the servers' cores, with zero inter-core communication. Moreover, Metron transparently integrates, manages, and load balances proprietary "blackboxes"together with Metron service chains. Metron realizes stateful network functions at the speed of 100GbE network cards on a single server, while elastically and rapidly adapting to changing workload volumes. Our experiments demonstrate that Metron service chains can coexist with heterogeneous blackboxes, while still leveraging Metron's accurate dispatching and load balancing. In summary, Metron has (i) 2.75-8× better efficiency, up to (ii) 4.7× lower latency, and (iii) 7.8× higher throughput than OpenBox, a state-of-the-art NFV system. © 2021 Owner/Author.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Association for Computing Machinery , 2021. Vol. 38, no 1-2, article id 3
Keywords [en]
100 GbE, Accurate dispatching, Blackboxes, Elasticity, Hardware offloading, Load balancing, NFV, Service chains, Tagging, Carry logic, Computer hardware, Electric load dispatching, Transfer functions, Changing workload, Commodity hardware, High-speed links, Inter-core communications, Multiple servers, Network functions, Packet processing, Underlying networks, Network function virtualization
National Category
Communication Systems
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ri:diva-58170DOI: 10.1145/3465628Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85111657554OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ri-58170DiVA, id: diva2:1628255
Note
Export Date: 14 January 2022; Article; CODEN: ACSYE; Funding details: Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, H2020, 770889; Funding details: European Research Council, ERC; Funding details: Stiftelsen för Strategisk Forskning, SSF; Funding details: Horizon 2020; Funding text 1: Part of this work was done when Georgios P. Katsikas was at RISE, Sweden. Part of this work was done when Tom Barbette was at the University of Liège, Belgium. This work has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 770889). This work was also funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF). Authors’ addresses: G. P. Katsikas, T. Barbette, D. Kostić, and G. Q. Maguire Jr., KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Kistagån-gen 16, Kista, Stockholm, SE-164 40, Sweden; emails: {katsikas, barbette, dmk, maguire}@kth.se; R. Steinert, RISE, Kistagån-gen 16, Kista, Stockholm, SE-164 40, Sweden; email: rebecca.steinert@ri.se. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s). © 2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). 0734-2071/2021/07-ART3 $15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3465628; Funding text 2: This work has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 770889). This work was also funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF)
2022-01-142022-01-142022-01-14Bibliographically approved