Performance evaluation of an HTTP proxy implemented as a virtual network function

Autor(es)

Eiras, V, Rodrigo S. ; Couto, Rodrigo S. ^[1] ; Rubinstein, Marcelo G. ^[2]

Afiliação do(s) autor(es)

^[1] Univ Fed Rio de Janeiro COPPE PEE GTA, Rio De Janeiro - Brazil

^[2] Eiras, Rodrigo S., V, Univ Estado Rio de Janeiro FEN DETEL PEL, Rio De Janeiro - Brazil

• Tipo de documento: Artigo Científico
• Fonte: ANNALS OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS; SEP 2021.
• Citações Web of Science: 0

Resumo

Network functions virtualization (NFV) is an important approach in the telecommunications industry. One of the main features of NFV is the execution of network functions in software rather than using specific hardware. These functions can run on virtualization platforms, which can increase service elasticity and reduce infrastructure costs. However, virtualization imposes performance penalties, which can severely impact NFV services. In this work, we analyze this performance impact when the virtualized network function is an HTTP proxy. We then compare two virtualization solutions, i.e., KVM and Docker, under different configurations. Our results show that Docker containers yield performance close to that of native Linux for HTTP proxies since Docker does not employ a hypervisor. We show that KVM incurs a severe performance penalty, which a paravirtualization approach can reduce. We also evaluate how much load balancing in Docker can improve the performance of virtual proxies. We show that, for our scenario, two parallel proxies significantly improve performance. However, we observe a negative impact when increasing the number of proxies since they interfere with each other. (AU)

• Processo FAPESP: 15/24494-8 - Comunicação e processamento de big data em nuvens e névoas computacionais
• Beneficiário: Nelson Luis Saldanha da Fonseca
• Modalidade de apoio: Auxílio à Pesquisa - Temático