Rethinking Access Networks with High Performance Virtual Software BRASes Roberto Bifulco, Thomas Dietz, Felipe Huici, Mohamed Ahmed, Joao Martins, Saverio Niccolini, Hans-Joerg Kolbe NEC Europe Ltd., NEC Laboratories Europe Heidelberg, Germany

Acknowledgements ▐NEC Laboratories Europe, Heidelberg, Germany ▐The work has been partially funded by the European FP-7 projects

HGW subscribers core network (IP) aggregation network DSLAM Internet EDGE ROUTER DC services IP PPP PPPoE Ethernet+VLAN SDH/PDH (DSL) IP Ethernet SDH, WDM, …. BRAS Broadband Access Network

 PPPoE/PPP sessions management  Header encapsulation/decapsulation  Interface to AAA  Traffic shaping  Access control  ARP proxy  IP Forwarding  IP addresses assignment  IGMP processing

Broadband Access Network  PPPoE/PPP sessions management  Header encapsulation/decapsulation  Interface to AAA  Traffic shaping  Access control  ARP proxy  IP Forwarding  IP addresses assignment  IGMP processing  Expensive  Monolithic architecture  Single point of failure  Hard to change

Network Function Virtualization ▐Decouple Network Functions from the hardware that provides them! VM

▐From Hardware to Software Do we need to maintain the same monolithic approach? ▐Server virtualization technologies are IT-oriented Network functions require optimized I/O Network Function Virtualization

▐From Hardware to Software Do we need to maintain the same monolithic approach? ▐Server virtualization technologies are IT-oriented Network functions require optimized I/O Network Function Virtualization Fast SOFTWARE VSWITCH Fast I/O Tiny, Fast VMs

Modular Network Functions ▐Exploit successful approaches: The Click Modular Router Element

Putting all together: ClickOS © NEC Corporation 2013 Page 10 [1] Netmap:

WTF? What’s The Function?

BRAS on ClickOS

EVALUATION An early performance

ClickOS: VNF instantiation ▐Cut of VM boot time down to less than 30 msec Up to 200 msec when running 400 VMs on a single PC ▐Instantaneous processing of middlebox functions ~20 msec when several VMs are already running © NEC Corporation 2013 Page 14 all measurements made on a single PC, Intel i7, 3,2GHz, 6 cores, 4GB RAM

Networking performance with 128 VMs ▐Line rate (10 Gbps) for all packet sizes (256 bytes and greater) 4.8 Mpps for 64 bytes packets © NEC Corporation 2013 Page 15 all measurements made on a single PC, Intel i7, 3,2GHz, 6 cores, 4GB RAM

▐Session setup rates Reached >1000 sessions/s Current BRAS technology reaches about 300s/s Same result with multiple (up to 25) VMs on the same server Not able to measure further because of limitations of test equipment PPP Control Plane © NEC Corporation 2013 Page 16 all measurements made on a single PC, Intel i7, 3,2GHz, 6 cores, 4GB RAM * ACK: Thanks to Xantaro Gmbh and Carsten Michel for the test-bed setup

Evaluation (summary) ▐Linux VM performance (without any network function) ~1% of 10Gbps for 256B packets ~1-10 sec boot time several MB memory footprint (hundreds..) ▐ClickOS performance 100% of 10Gbps for all packet sizes bigger than 256B (100x faster) ~30 msec boot time (30x faster) 5 MB memory footprint (at least 10x smaller) Able to run hundreds VMs on a single PC ▐PPP control plane Session establishment rate: >1000 sessions/s Memory requirement: 1MB to support 1000 sessions ▐PPP data plane 100% of 10Gbps for all packet sizes bigger than 512B

Conclusion ▐We introduced ClickOS, an innovative technology to build VNF ▐We built a BRAS VNF based on ClickOS ▐We provided a early performance evaluation of our prototype 100% of 10Gbps for all packet sizes bigger than 256B for plain ClickOS 100% of 10Gbps for all packet sizes bigger than 512B for PPP data plane ~30 msec boot time (30x faster) 5 MB memory footprint (at least 10x smaller) Able to run hundreds VMs on a single PC Session establishment rate: >1000 sessions/s Memory requirement: 1MB to support 1000 sessions ▐…▐…

Future work ▐We shown how to decompose network functions, in order to enable a new way of composing them again!! HGW Subscribers DSLAM PPPoE IPoE Controller PPP termination PPP decapsulation ▐An enabler to build Service Chains ▐There is still room for performance optimizations ▐Standard activities ETSI NFV, …