Performance benchmarking of state-of-the-art software switches for NFV

With the ultimate goal of replacing proprietary hardware appliances with Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) implemented in software, Function Virtualization (NFV) has gained popularity past few years. Software switches are widely employed to route traffic between VNFs and physical Interface Cards (NICs). It is thus paramount importance compare performance different switch designs architectures. In this paper, we propose a methodology fairly comprehensively software switches. We first explore design spaces 7 state-of-the-art then their under four representative test scenarios. Each scenario corresponds specific case routing NFV NICs and/or VNFs. our experiments, evaluate throughput latency two most popular virtualization environments, namely virtual machines (VMs) containers. Our experimental results show that no single prevails all is, therefore, crucial choose suitable solution for given use case. At same time, presented analysis provide more in-depth insight into tradeoffs identify potential bottlenecks could inspire new designs.