Towards effective network algorithms on multi-core network processors

Abstract

To build high-performance network devices with holistic security protection, a large number of algorithms have been proposed. However, multi-core implementation of the existing algorithms suffers from three limitations: performance instability, data-structure heterogeneity, and hardware dependency. In this paper, we propose three principles for effective network processing on multi-core network processors. To verify the effectiveness of these principles, algorithms for two typical network processing tasks are redesigned and implemented on the Cavium Octeon3860 network processor. Test results show that our schemes achieve superior performance in comparison with existing best-known algorithms.