Home // International Journal On Advances in Intelligent Systems, volume 2, number 4, 2009 // View article

Analysis and Experimental Evaluation of Network Data-Plane Virtualization Mechanisms

Authors:
Fabienne Anhalt
Pascale Vicat-Blanc Primet

Keywords: Network virtualization; data plane; performance; Xen; KVM

Abstract:
Combining end-host, server and router virtualization could offer isolated and malleable virtual networks of different types, owners and protocols, all sharing one physical infrastructure. However, the virtualization of the data plane may lead to performance degradation and unpredictability. These arise not only due to additional processing, but also from the sharing of physical resources like memory, CPU and network devices. This article analyses network virtualization from the data plane’s perspective. We explore the resulting network performance in terms of throughput, packet loss and latency between virtual machines, as well as the induced CPU cost. The virtual machines act as senders or receivers, or as software routers forwarding traffic between two interfaces in the context of Xen and KVM. Our results show that the impact of virtualization with Xen has become smaller with its successive versions. Moreover, compared to KVM, Xen gives better network performance with less processing overhead. Therefore, Xen currently seems to be one of the most interesting software data-plane virtualization technologies.

Pages: 434 to 445

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2009. Used with permission.

Publication date: March 17, 2010

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2679