OVS-DPDK-I: A CPU-Efficient High-Speed Open vSwitch

As cloud computing has prospered, more and more demands and usage scenarios have emerged. So, a robust resource allocation strategy is urgently needed. Usually, a physical server runs many virtual machines (VMs), and the switch allows these VMs to communicate over the Internet. Open vSwitch (OVS) is one of the most popular virtual switches. Besides, there is an accelerated version: OVS-DPDK, which can achieve 5 times throughput than vanilla OVS, but requires more CPUs. When launching the VMs, the operator must choose to configure OVS or OVS-DPDK according to the requirements of the network. However, those have some disadvantages, so we propose an enhanced OVS based on OVS-DPDK, which is named OVS-DPDK-I. The test results show that our technique can transfer packets as fast as OVS-DPDK, and when the transmission rate is low, CPU utilization can be 50% lower than OVS-DPDK, even lower than OVS. In terms of CPU utilization, we also monitor network latency and explain how network traffic patterns affect it.