NFPA: Network function performance analyzer

With the soar of Software Defined Networking planning a network service becomes harder of a task than ever before. Selecting traditional network elements that provide the best value for money given the performance requirements and the allocated budget is not the only option today: one might also take the software solution on generic hardware alternative. The problem is that the set of available solutions and the possible combinations of software and hardware components in this nowadays´ alternative is frustratingly vast while the decision maker lacks any clear benchmarking comparison between the existing options. Our solution presented in this paper provides an answer to this critical need: we propose a benchmarking tool that allows the user to measure the important performance metrics of any network function realized on any hardware and software combination, and then to compare the results on a web interface with those of all the setups collected in our database.