On the Performance Benefits of Heterogeneous Virtual Network Function Execution Frameworks

As the adoption of softwarized network functions (NFs) keeps growing, we evaluate the performance benefits of SDN-aware data-plane implementations when compared to diverse acceleration and process-based NFV frameworks. Typical network functions have been implemented using four alternative frameworks scenarios, an SDN-aware software switch (data-plane), a virtual machine (VM), a Data-Plane Development Kit (DPDK) NF, and a containerized NF. Results from our experiments show that the data-plane NF implementation yields much higher bandwidth and packets per second (pps) rates. The bandwidth obtained is 14% more than the user-space scenario while retaining CPU utilization. The DPDK NFs in our evaluation can process packets at a much higher rate for 64B packets, on a single CPU core, which is 7 times higher than the containerized NF implementations, also tied to a single core. Our results also show the performance gains from deploying virtual network functions on heterogeneous frameworks.