Using hardware classification to improve PC-based OpenFlow switching

OpenFlow is a promising technology that offers a flexible flow-based forwarding scheme based on multiple fields in the packet headers of different protocol layers. It provides a feasibility to adopt new network protocols and innovations thanks to a more flexible forwarding compared to traditional IP forwarding. In this paper, we propose an architectural design to improve lookup performance of PC-based OpenFlow switching in Linux using a standard commodity network interface card based on the Intel 82599 Gigabit Ethernet controller. We introduce a fast data path based on caching of flow table entries in on-board classification hardware on the NIC. We describe our design, and we present an experimental evaluation of its performance. Our results show that the throughput of our fast path gives over 40 percent higher throughput compared to the regular software-based OpenFlow switching.