Demystifying the energy efficiency of Network Function Virtualization

Zhifeng Xu, Fangming Liu*, Tao Wang, Hong Xu

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapters, Conference Papers, Creative and Literary WorksRGC 32 - Refereed conference paper (with host publication)peer-review

39 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Middleboxes are prevalent in today's enterprise and data center networks. Network function virtualization (NFV) is a promising technology to replace dedicated hardware middleboxes with virtualized network functions (VNFs) running on commodity servers. However, no prior study has examined the energy efficiency of different NFV implementations. In this paper, we conduct a measurement study on the power efficiency of software data planes, the virtual I/O and the software middleboxes, which are important parts of the NFV implementations. We run two popular software middleboxes (Snort and Bro) on three common software data planes (i.e., DPDK-OVS, Click Modular Router and Netmap). Our results show significant differences on power among those different NFV implementations. We analyze the underlying design choices and give implications on how to build more power efficient NFV implementations.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2016 IEEE/ACM 24th International Symposium on Quality of Service, IWQoS 2016
PublisherIEEE
ISBN (Print)9781509026340
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 20 Jun 2016
Event24th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Quality of Service, IWQoS 2016 - Beijing, China
Duration: 20 Jun 201621 Jun 2016

Conference

Conference24th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Quality of Service, IWQoS 2016
PlaceChina
CityBeijing
Period20/06/1621/06/16

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