Efficient Handling of Protocol Stacks for Dynamic Software Packet Processing

New standards for 40 and 100 Gbit/s and beyond impose increasing demands for software packet processing frameworks. Protocol stacks used in high-speed packet processing frameworks are reduced to basic functionality to cope with the performance requirements. Development of sophisticated applications require manifold functionality from the protocol stack, while being flexible and extensible to allow support of newly developed protocols. This becomes increasingly important as for instance data-center operators apply more forms of packet encapsulation, generating complex protocol stacks. Existing examples for highperformance frameworks are not able to fulfill all these aspects or have to make compromises. We present the protocol stack of the libmoon framework, a novel design for dynamic protocol stacks based on code generation and JIT compilation. Defining the format of a new protocol header is the only action that has to be performed by a programmer. The desired protocol stack is generated automatically from this information, allowing combination of arbitrary headers. Thereby, a complex and full set of utility functions is provided to the application developer. We evaluate our protocol stacks using measurements in a VXLAN setup, which also highlight how the new protocol stack API allows to easily create applications in a flexible and intuitive manner.