A Host-Based Performance Comparison of 40G NFV Environments Focusing on Packet Processing Architectures and Virtual Switches

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is now accepted in large production networks for agile introduction of various Network Functions (NFs). A service chaining technology that dynamically links multiple NFs over the entire network is a heart of the NFV concept. However, virtualizing NF-dedicated hardwares as virtual machines on IA servers brings performance problems, such as lower throughput, longer latency, and larger jitter. Various packet processing frameworks and virtual switches have been proposed to resolve the problems, but there is no comprehensive study of their performance characteristics focusing on both physical/virtual layers. In this paper, we evaluate fundamental throughput and latency/jitter of three packet processing architectures (NAPI, netmap, and DPDK) with six virtual switches (Linux Bridge, Open vSwitch, VALE, L2FWD-DPDK, OVS-DPDK, and Lagopus) for physical/virtual layers. Our experiments were performed on both Intel and Mellanox 40 GbE NICs. Finally, we discuss appropriate NFV host environment for commercial-use.