P4NFV: An NFV Architecture with Flexible Data Plane Reconfiguration

Current architecture proposals for Network Function Virtualization (NFV) do not integrate hardware-accelerated network function implementations. Recent research studies have shown that pure software-based implementations cannot achieve the needed line rates for todays network services. We propose P4NFV to fill this gap. Making use of an additional abstraction layer, P4NFV is an architecture that can achieve software-based network function implementations as well as handle P4 for programming protocol-independent packet processors. With P4NFV, network operators can still instantiate network functions that are specified in terms of computing and storage hardware, while making use of the performance improvements of P4-enhanced networking hardware. Moreover, in order to take the fast changing nature of todays network services into account, P4NFV integrates mechanisms to reconfigure P4-based network functions at runtime: another missing gap in literature. Based on a proof-of-concept implementation of P4NFV for four network functions, we show promising measurement results. Whereas the network function implementations tailored towards reconfigurations add only marginal overhead, even configuring network functions at runtime does not notably affect network service operations with higher latency or severe packet loss.