NetBricks: Taking the V out of NFV

Aurojit Panda, Sangjin Han, Keon Jang, Melvin Walls, Sylvia Ratnasamy, Scott Shenker

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

The move from hardware middleboxes to software network functions, as advocated by NFV, has proven more challenging than expected. Developing new NFs remains a tedious process, requiring that developers repeatedly rediscover and reapply the same set of optimizations, while current techniques for providing isolation between NFs (using VMs or containers) incur high performance overheads. In this paper we describe NetBricks, a new NFV framework that tackles both these problems. For building NFs we take inspiration from modern data analytics frameworks (e.g., Spark and Dryad) and build a small set of customizable network processing elements. We also embrace type checking and safe runtimes to provide isolation in software, rather than rely on hardware isolation. NetBricks provides the same memory isolation as containers and VMs, without incurring the same performance penalties. To improve I/O efficiency, we introduce a novel technique called zero-copy software isolation.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 12th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, OSDI 2016
PublisherUSENIX Association
Pages203-216
Number of pages14
ISBN (Electronic)9781931971331
StatePublished - 2016
Event12th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, OSDI 2016 - Savannah, United States
Duration: Nov 2 2016Nov 4 2016

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 12th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, OSDI 2016

Conference

Conference12th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, OSDI 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySavannah
Period11/2/1611/4/16

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Information Systems
  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Hardware and Architecture

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