SoftFlow: A middlebox architecture for open vswitch

Ethan J. Jackson, Melvin Walls, Aurojit Panda, Justin Pettit, Ben Pfaff, Jarno Rajahalme, Teemu Koponen, Scott Shenker

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

Abstract

Open vSwitch is a high-performance multi-layer virtual switch that serves as a flexible foundation for building virtualized, stateless Layer 2 and 3 network services in multitenant datacenters. As workloads become more sophisticated, providing tenants with virtualized middlebox services is an increasingly important and recurring theme, yet it remains difficult to integrate these stateful services efficiently into Open vSwitch and its OpenFlow forwarding model: middleboxes perform complex operations that depend on internal state and inspection of packet payloads - functionality which is impossible to express in OpenFlow. In this paper, we present SoftFlow, an extension of Open vSwitch that seamlessly integrates middlebox functionality while maintaining the familiar OpenFlow forwarding model and performing significantly better than alternative techniques for middlebox integration.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2016 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, USENIX ATC 2016
PublisherUSENIX Association
Pages15-28
Number of pages14
ISBN (Electronic)9781931971300
StatePublished - 2016
Event2016 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, USENIX ATC 2016 - Denver, United States
Duration: Jun 22 2016Jun 24 2016

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 2016 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, USENIX ATC 2016

Conference

Conference2016 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, USENIX ATC 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityDenver
Period6/22/166/24/16

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Computer Science

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