625 research outputs found
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System Design and Implementation for Hybrid Network Function Virtualization
With the application of virtualization technology in computer networks, many new research areas and techniques have been explored, such as network function virtualization (NFV). A significant benefit of virtualization is that it reduces the cost of a network system and increases its flexibility. Due to the increasing complexity of the network environment and constantly improving network scale and bandwidth, it is imperative to aim for higher performance, extensibility, and flexibility in the future network systems. In this dissertation, hybrid NFV platforms applying virtualization technology are proposed. We further explore the techniques used to improve the performance, scalability and resilience of these systems.
In the first part of this dissertation, we describe a new heterogeneous hardware-software NFV platform that provides scalability and programmability while supporting significant hardware-level parallelism and reconfiguration. Our computing platform takes advantage of both field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and microprocessors to implement numerous virtual network functions (VNFs) that can be dynamically customized to specific network flow needs. Traffic management and hardware reconfiguration functions are performed by a global coordinator which allows for the rapid sharing of network function states and continuous evaluation of network function needs. With the help of state sharing mechanism offered by the coordinator, customer-defined VNF instances can be easily migrated between heterogeneous middleboxes as the network environment changes. A resource allocation algorithm dynamically assesses resource deployments as network flows and conditions are updated.
In the second part of this thesis document, we explore a new session-level approach for NFV that implements distributed agents in heterogeneous middleboxes to steer packets belonging to different sessions through session-specific service chains. Our session-level approach supports inter-domain service chaining with both FPGA- and processor-based middleboxes, dynamic reconfiguration of service chains for ongoing sessions, and the application of session-level approaches for UDP-based protocols. To demonstrate our approach, we establish inter-domain service chains for QUIC sessions, and reconfigure the service chains across a range of FPGA- and processor-based middleboxes. We show that our session-level approach can successfully reconfigure service chains for individual QUIC sessions. Compared with software implementations, the distributed agents implemented on FPGAs show better performance in various test scenarios
dReDBox: Materializing a full-stack rack-scale system prototype of a next-generation disaggregated datacenter
Current datacenters are based on server machines, whose mainboard and hardware components form the baseline, monolithic building block that the rest of the system software, middleware and application stack are built upon. This leads to the following limitations: (a) resource proportionality of a multi-tray system is bounded by the basic building block (mainboard), (b) resource allocation to processes or virtual machines (VMs) is bounded by the available resources within the boundary of the mainboard, leading to spare resource fragmentation and inefficiencies, and (c) upgrades must be applied to each and every server even when only a specific component needs to be upgraded. The dRedBox project (Disaggregated Recursive Datacentre-in-a-Box) addresses the above limitations, and proposes the next generation, low-power, across form-factor datacenters, departing from the paradigm of the mainboard-as-a-unit and enabling the creation of function-block-as-a-unit. Hardware-level disaggregation and software-defined wiring of resources is supported by a full-fledged Type-1 hypervisor that can execute commodity virtual machines, which communicate over a low-latency and high-throughput software-defined optical network. To evaluate its novel approach, dRedBox will demonstrate application execution in the domains of network functions virtualization, infrastructure analytics, and real-time video surveillance.This work has been supported in part by EU H2020 ICTproject dRedBox, contract #687632.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
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Internet Infrastructures for Large Scale Emulation with Efficient HW/SW Co-design
Connected systems are becoming more ingrained in our daily lives with the advent of cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence. As technology progresses, we expect the number of networked systems to rise along with their complexity. As these systems become abstruse, it becomes paramount to understand their interactions and nuances. In particular, Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET) and swarm communication systems exhibit added complexity due to a multitude of environmental and physical conditions. Testing these types of systems is challenging and incurs high engineering and deployment costs. In this work, we propose a scalable MANET emulation framework using virtualized internet infrastructures that generalizes an assortment of application spaces with diverse attributes. We then quantify the architecture using various evaluation techniques to determine both feasibility and scalability. Finally, we developed a hardware offload engine for virtualized network systems that builds upon recent work in the field
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