Network-Wide Service Deployment Using Centrally Orchestrated, eBPF-Based Programmable Dataplanes
Filip Holík, Marco M. Cook, Awais Aziz Shah, Dimitrios P. Pezaros · 2025
The separation of control and data planes along with controller centralisation have enabled more efficient network orchestration to support current diverse use cases. However, typical southbound protocols, for instance OpenFlow, have technical limitations such as statically defined match fields and no support for line rate per-packet processing for complex actions. Network programmatically implemented through P4 provides a more agile and dynamic solution to achieve line rate performance, however it can only be realistically deployed on specific hardware targets that are prohibitively expensive. Conversely, eBPF has recently gained traction as an alternative offering increased deployment flexibility and stateful programmability compared to conventional OpenFlow or P4 deployments, while also being hardware agnostic, hence addressing a wider range of devices and important use cases including 6G networks. In this paper, we propose the centralised control plane orchestration of eBPF-based programmable data plane devices. Our orchestrator uses eBPF programs instead of OpenFlow rules to perform packet processing and supports more complex code structures than P4. We emulate a three-layer hierarchical network model, and implement a congestion avoidance network service that autonomously manages eBPF functions to achieve sustainable and zero-touch network operations.