Honey for the Ice Bear - Dynamic eBPF in P4
Manuel Simon, Henning Stubbe, Sebastian Gallenmüller, Georg Carle · 2024
Software updates typically require system reboots, leading to service downtimes. We aim to solve this problem for network components allowing updates while avoiding service degradation. In this paper, we explore the integration of eBPF into the P4 pipeline for efficient packet processing. This way, we combine the flexibility and dynamic adaptability of eBPF with the efficiency of P4. The integration enhances the power of applications and enables the network operator to provide customizable data paths as a service. Our solution allows updating the data path at runtime and without downtime. We implement the approach for the P4 target T4P4S, discuss different performance models, and share implementation insights. The evaluation focuses on the overhead in terms of throughput and the costs of code updates expressed in the latency of the related packets. We show that eBPF execution is possible with reasonable costs, promising dynamic network functions within P4.