Survey of Performance Acceleration Techniques for Network Function Virtualization
Proceedings of the IEEE, (January 2019)Abstract
The ongoing network softwarization trend holds the promise to revolutionize network infrastructures by making them more flexible, reconfigurable, portable, and more adaptive than ever. Still, the migration from hard-coded/hardwired network functions towards their software-programmable counterparts comes along with the need for tailored optimizations and acceleration techniques, so as to avoid, or at least mitigate, the throughput/latency performance degradation with respect to
fixed function network elements. The contribution of this article is twofold. First, we provide a comprehensive overview of the
host-based Network Function Virtualization (NFV) ecosystem, covering a broad range of techniques, from low level hardware acceleration and bump-in-the-wire offloading approaches, to high-level software acceleration solutions, including the virtualization technique itself. Second, we derive guidelines regarding the design, development, and operation of NFV-based deployments that meet the flexibility and scalability requirements of modern communication networks.