KOMon — Kernel-based Online Monitoring of VNF Packet Processing Times

Abstract

The ongoing softwarization of networks comes with several advantages like cost efficiency, increased scalability, and better flexibility by migrating functionality from static, application specific hardware appliances to flexible, lightweight software solutions running on COTS hardware. In order to maximize the performance gains promised by the NFV paradigm, several challenges remain to be solved. In this work, we address the accurate acquisition of key performance indicators, specifically the packet processing time, of softwarized network functions. To this end, we present KOMon, a Kernel-based online monitoring tool to reliably measure the packet processing times of network functions through lightweight in-stack monitoring. We show that KOMon reports highly accurate values in different scenarios and discuss the applicability of the proposed mechanism for different use cases.

Performance Evaluation of Next-Generation Data Plane Architectures and their Components

“…Performance Monitoring [18] Performance Modeling [1,2,19] Control Plane Performance [10,14] Traffic Modeling [6,17,22,23] Network Security [15] Data Plane Abstraction [3,12,20] Methodology [21] Simulative Performance Analysis Performance Modeling. Subsequently, in Chapter 2 of this thesis, we apply our monitoring approach to obtain measurement values for a state-of-the-art software router.…”

“…• Geißler, S., Lange, S., Wamser, F., Zinner, T., Hoßfeld, T.: "KOMon -Kernel-based Online Monitoring of VNF Packet Processing Times, " in International Conference on Networked Systems (NetSys), 2019. [18] • Lange, S., Linguaglossa, L., Geißler, S., Rossi, D., Zinner, T.: "Discrete-Time Modeling of NFV Accelerators that Exploit Batched Processing, " in IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), 2019. [19] • Geißler, S., Lange, S., Linguaglossa, L., Rossi, D., Zinner, T., Hoßfeld, T.: "Discrete-Time Modeling of NFV Accelerators that Exploit Batched Processing, " in ACM Transactions on Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems (ToMPECS), 2021.…”

“…This approach eliminates the need for port mirroring and allows online monitoring with minimal overhead by hooking into the network stack, which needs to be traversed by every packet destined for a hosted VNF. In the following, the architecture, monitoring logic, and a proof-of-concept implementation of KOMon [18] (Kernel-based Online Monitoring) is discussed, before a case study using an exemplary VNF is conducted. The code for both the monitoring tool and the VNF used in the case study can be found on GitHub 1 .…”

NFV Platform Design: A Survey

“…Symperf [82] predicts VNF runtime performance and functional behaviors under various traffic dynamics through code analysis. KOMon [83] is a kernel-based online monitoring tool to measure packet processing times imposed by the target VNF. Instead of merely focusing on individual VNFs, several platforms capable of characterizing performance for SFCs.…”