Placement and Chaining in NFV: How to Deal When the Data Plane is Programmable and Multi-Tenant?
Abstract
Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has become key for scalable provisioning of in-network services, and network function placement and chaining (VNFPC) plays a critical role in this context. Despite the intense research activity in VNFPC, existing solutions do not consider that the data plane can be programmable and multi-tenant. On the one hand, some custom functions may require mechanisms like in-band telemetry or home-brewed protocols in programmable switches along the network path. On the other hand, the deployment of switches to meet specific network function requirements may affect other network flows. In this paper, we discuss the novel layer of complexity that data plane programmability introduces to VNFPC, and we propose a first solution to this problem, which leverages multi-tenancy in programmable switches to schedule virtual switches to process network function flows.
Keywords:
SDN, NFV, P4, PDP
References
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Sherry, J., Hasan, S., Scott, C., Krishnamurthy, A., Ratnasamy, S., and Sekar, V. (2012). Making middleboxes someone else’s problem: Network processing as a cloud service. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 42(4):13–24.
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Sun, J., Zhang, Y., Liu, F., Wang, H., Xu, X., and Li, Y. (2022). A survey on the placement of virtual network functions. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 202:103361.
Turner, J. S. and Taylor, D. E. (2005). Diversifying the internet. In GLOBECOM’05. IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference, 2005., volume 2, pages 6–pp. IEEE.
Vieira, M. A., Castanho, M. S., Pacífico, R. D., Santos, E. R., Júnior, E. P. C., and Vieira, L. F. (2020). Fast packet processing with eBPF and XDP: Concepts, code, challenges, and applications. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 53(1):1–36.
Wang, Y., Nguyen, L., and Hu, Q. (2023). Network function virtualization in elastic optical networks. Journal of Lightwave Technology, 41(16):5183–5192.
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Bezerra, V. M., Leao, A. A., Oliveira, J. F., and Santos, M. O. (2020). Models for the two-dimensional level strip packing problem–a review and a computational evaluation. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 71(4):606–627.
Bosshart, P., Daly, D., Gibb, G., Izzard, M., McKeown, N., Rexford, J., Schlesinger, C., Talayco, D., Vahdat, A., Varghese, G., et al. (2014). P4: Programming protocol-independent packet processors. ACM SIGCOMM CCR, 44(3):87–95.
Bueno, G., Saquetti, M., Rodrigues, P., Lamb, I., Gaspary, L., Luizelli, M. C., Zhani, M. F., Azambuja, J. R., and Cordeiro, W. (2022). Managing virtual programmable switches: Principles, requirements, and design directions. IEEE Communications Magazine, 60(2):53–59.
Cohen, R., Lewin-Eytan, L., Naor, J. S., and Raz, D. (2015). Near optimal placement of virtual network functions. In 2015 IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), pages 1346–1354. IEEE.
Cordeiro, W., Marques, J., and Gaspary, L. P. (2017). Data plane programmability beyond OpenFlow: Opportunities and challenges for network and service operations and management. Journal of Network and Systems Management, 25:784–818.
Dietrich, D., Abujoda, A., Rizk, A., and Papadimitriou, P. (2017). Multi-provider service chain embedding with Nestor. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, 14(1):91–105.
ETSI (2023). Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); Terminology for Main Concepts in NFV. [link].
ETSI (2024). Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) Release 4; Management and Orchestration; Architectural Framework Specification. [link].
Halpern, J. and Pignataro, C. (2015). Service function chaining (SFC) architecture. Request for Comments: 7665. Technical report.
Han, S., Jang, S., Choi, H., Lee, H., and Pack, S. (2020). Virtualization in programmable data plane: A survey and open challenges. IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, 1:527–534.
Hancock, D. and Van Der Merwe, J. (2016). Hyper4: Using P4 to virtualize the programmable data plane. In CoNEXT’16, pages 35–49. ACM.
Hsieh, C.-H., Chang, J.-W., Chen, C., and Lu, S.-H. (2016). Network-aware service function chaining placement in a data center. In 2016 18th Asia-Pacific Network Operations and Management Symposium (APNOMS), pages 1–6. IEEE.
Jin, X., Li, X., Zhang, H., Soulé, R., Lee, J., Foster, N., Kim, C., and Stoica, I. (2017). NetCache: Balancing key-value stores with fast in-network caching. In Proceedings of the 26th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, pages 121–136.
Kim, C., Sivaraman, A., Katta, N., Bas, A., Dixit, A., Wobker, L. J., et al. (2015). In-band network telemetry via programmable dataplanes. In ACM SIGCOMM, volume 15, pages 1–2.
Kreutz, D., Ramos, F. M., Verissimo, P. E., Rothenberg, C. E., Azodolmolky, S., and Uhlig, S. (2014). Software-defined networking: A comprehensive survey. Proceedings of the IEEE, 103(1):14–76.
Laghrissi, A. and Taleb, T. (2018). A survey on the placement of virtual resources and virtual network functions. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 21(2):1409–1434.
Lamb, I. P., Duarte, P. A. P. R., Luizelli, M. C., Gaspary, L. P., Azambuja, J. R., and da Costa Cordeiro, W. L. (2024a). Multi-tenant programmable switch virtualization leveraging explicit resource sharing. In 20th International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM 2024), pages 1–8. IFIP/IEEE.
Lamb, I. P., Facen, T., Duarte, P., Azambuja, J. R., and Cordeiro, W. (2024b). Multi-tenant programmable switch virtualization architecture. In NOMS 2024-2024 IEEE Network Operations and Management Symposium, pages 1–5. IEEE.
Li, Z. and Yang, Y. (2018). Placement of virtual network functions in hybrid data center networks. IEEE Transactions on Multi-Scale Computing Systems, 4(4):861–873.
Lodi, A., Martello, S., and Vigo, D. (2004). Models and bounds for two-dimensional level packing problems. Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, 8.
Luizelli, M. C., Bays, L. R., Buriol, L. S., Barcellos, M. P., and Gaspary, L. P. (2015). Piecing together the NFV provisioning puzzle: Efficient placement and chaining of virtual network functions. In 2015 IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM), pages 98–106. IEEE.
Luizelli, M. C., da Costa Cordeiro, W. L., Buriol, L. S., and Gaspary, L. P. (2017a). A fix-and-optimize approach for efficient and large scale virtual network function placement and chaining. Computer Communications, 102:67–77.
Luizelli, M. C., da Costa Cordeiro, W. L., Buriol, L. S., and Gaspary, L. P. (2017b). A fix-and-optimize approach for efficient and large scale virtual network function placement and chaining. Computer Communications, 102:67–77.
McKeown, N., Anderson, T., Balakrishnan, H., Parulkar, G., Peterson, L., Rexford, J., Shenker, S., and Turner, J. (2008). OpenFlow: enabling innovation in campus networks. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 38(2):69–74.
Miyamura, T. and Misawa, A. (2023). Joint optimization of optical path provisioning and VNF placement in VCDN. Optical Switching and Networking, 49:100740.
Moens, H. and De Turck, F. (2014). VNF-P: A model for efficient placement of virtualized network functions. In 10th International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM) and Workshop, pages 418–423. IEEE.
Pietrobuoni, E. (2015). Two-dimensional bin packing problem with guillotine restrictions.
Ribeiro, G., Pedrosa, L., Signorello, S., and Ramos, F. M. V. (2024). Internet architecture evolution: Found in translation. In Proceedings of the 23rd ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks, HotNets ’24, pages 300–307. Association for Computing Machinery.
Saquetti, M., Bueno, G., Cordeiro, W., and Azambuja, J. R. (2020). P4VBox: Enabling P4-based switch virtualization. IEEE Communications Letters, 24(1):146–149.
Schardong, F., Nunes, I., and Schaeffer-Filho, A. (2021). NFV resource allocation: A systematic review and taxonomy of VNF forwarding graph embedding. Computer Networks, 185:107726.
Sherry, J., Hasan, S., Scott, C., Krishnamurthy, A., Ratnasamy, S., and Sekar, V. (2012). Making middleboxes someone else’s problem: Network processing as a cloud service. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 42(4):13–24.
Sivaraman, V., Narayana, S., Rottenstreich, O., Muthukrishnan, S., and Rexford, J. (2017). Heavy-hitter detection entirely in the data plane. In Proceedings of the Symposium on SDN Research, SOSR ’17, pages 164–176. Association for Computing Machinery.
Sun, J., Zhang, Y., Liu, F., Wang, H., Xu, X., and Li, Y. (2022). A survey on the placement of virtual network functions. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 202:103361.
Turner, J. S. and Taylor, D. E. (2005). Diversifying the internet. In GLOBECOM’05. IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference, 2005., volume 2, pages 6–pp. IEEE.
Vieira, M. A., Castanho, M. S., Pacífico, R. D., Santos, E. R., Júnior, E. P. C., and Vieira, L. F. (2020). Fast packet processing with eBPF and XDP: Concepts, code, challenges, and applications. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 53(1):1–36.
Wang, Y., Nguyen, L., and Hu, Q. (2023). Network function virtualization in elastic optical networks. Journal of Lightwave Technology, 41(16):5183–5192.
Xia, M., Shirazipour, M., Zhang, Y., Green, H., and Takacs, A. (2015). Network function placement for NFV chaining in packet/optical data centers. Journal of Lightwave Technology, 33(8):1565–1570.
Published
2025-05-19
How to Cite
DA SILVA, Aline Fraga; LAMB, Ivan Peter; DUARTE, Pedro Arthur; AZAMBUJA, José Rodrigo; LUNARDI, Roben; GASPARY, Luciano Paschoal; CORDEIRO, Weverton.
Placement and Chaining in NFV: How to Deal When the Data Plane is Programmable and Multi-Tenant?. In: BRAZILIAN SYMPOSIUM ON COMPUTER NETWORKS AND DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS (SBRC), 43. , 2025, Natal/RN.
Anais [...].
Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação,
2025
.
p. 462-475.
ISSN 2177-9384.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/sbrc.2025.6254.
