Enhancing VNF performance by exploiting SR-IOV and DPDK packet processing acceleration

The primary goal of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is the migration of physical network functions to software versions running on virtual machines (VM) in cloud computing environments. Rapid developments in virtualization technologies have made high-speed network connections and line rate packet processing viable in virtualized infrastructure environments. Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) of network traffic in the form of a computational intensive virtualized network function (VNF) was selected as a representative use-case. The DPI use case was used, to demonstrate the benefits of using SR-IOV enabled devices with DPDK to support performant Virtual Network Function (VNF) deployments. Performance evaluation of VNF versions using LibPCAP, SR-IOV and DPDK have been carried out. The results demonstrate that significantly higher packet throughput performance can be achieved when using SR-IOV and DPDK in unison in comparison to packet processing with the native Linux kernel network stack.