MicroNF:a microservice-based hybrid framework for NFV

Abstract

Network function virtualization (NFV) brought significant flexibility.However,such flexibility came with considerable compromises,since virtual machine carried monolithic functions could introduce significant performance overhead.A novel high-performance and programmable framework called MicroNF was proposed,which combines programmable hardware infrastructure and traditional software infrastructure in NFV to achieve both high performance and flexibility.In particular,microservice,a new design approach in software architecture,was leveraged by MicroNF to re-architect NFV to enable functional reusability among services and improve performance.MicroNF was implemented in a test bed based on OpenStack and ONetCard.Experimental results show that MicroNF reduces the forwarding latency of a service chain by an average of 70% compared with DPDK-based software implementation.

Keywords

• network function virtualization;hybrid infrastructure;microservice;service chain;modularization