Performance Evaluation of Hardware-Accelerated SDN and NFV

To cope with the increasing complexity in cloud data centers induced by novel services and increasing traffic demands, new mechanism for network management have emerged. Especially the concepts of software-defined networking (SDN), which separates the data from the control plane and Network Function Virtualization, which replaces classic middle box devices like firewalls with softwarized solutions are enjoying an increasing popularity.

Despite the increased flexibility and the lowered maintenance costs provided by these concepts, both approaches suffer from the main drawback of adding additional delay to every connection as the packets are processed in software.

In this project we investigate how hardware-accelerated approaches are able to mitigate this drawback. For this we conduct performance evaluations in varying scenarios with a focus on security applications and NFV placement.

Nicolas Gray