Measuring End-to-end Packet Processing Time in Service Function Chaining
Nguyen Van Tu, Jae‐Hyoung Yoo, James Won‐Ki Hong · 2020
Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is the key to enable rapid development and deployment of network services as well as simplicity and flexibility in network operations and management. To achieve the maximum benefit of NFV, monitoring the performance characteristics of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) is crucial. Packet processing time is one of the most important performance metrics when it comes to VNF monitoring. In this paper, we present Packet Processing Time Monitoring (PPTMon) - a real-time, end-to-end solution for VNF packet processing time monitoring. PPTMon can provide per-hop monitoring for a single VNF as well as end-to-end monitoring for multiple VNFs in service function chains. PPTMon works by embedding timestamp information directly into the packets. PPTMon is implemented on top of extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) - a new Linux framework that allows high-speed packet processing. Our experiment results showed that PPTMon can monitor VNF packet processing time with high accuracy and negligible performance impact.