Towards Building Secure and Reconfigurable Virtual Networks on Multi-Tenant Data Centers

Network virtualization (NV) has been widely used today in data centers to meet the multi-tenancy requirement-a key to achieving Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) in a modern cloud environment. However, even though NV is a popular solution employed by network operators, we argue that most solutions still have challenges in terms of (i) configuration, (ii) management, and (iii) security; all of which hinder the deployment of secure and practical virtual networks that tenants wish to construct. To bridge the gaps, we propose LinkWire, a new NV system that produces secure and reconfigurable virtual networks. For this, LinkWire leverages extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF), the recently-adopted in-kernel programmable networking technology. We also illustrate several use cases to show how our system brings benefits.