Robustness Assessment of Open vSwitch: the Linux Kernel Module

• José Flauzino UFPR http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8235-4897
• Marco Vieira University of North Carolina at Charlotte https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5103-8541
• Elias P. Duarte Jr. UFPR https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8916-3302

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/wtf.2025.8707

Abstract

Open vSwitch is a software implementation of a multilayer network switch designed for the virtualization context. Its architecture includes components in the user and kernel spaces. Integrated into the Linux kernel since 2012, Open vSwitch is now a mature project and widely adopted in virtualized environments. Although Open vSwitch is the subject of several studies focusing on performance, its robustness is still unknown. This paper proposes an approach for evaluating the robustness of a fundamental component of Open vSwitch, the kernel module. The approach is based on injecting faults into the kernel module's Netlink interface. The robustness assessment conducted reveals failures of different natures and indicates an inconsistency in handling the adversities imposed by the tests.

Keywords: Open vSwitch, Robustness Testing, Fault Injection

References

Ait-Ameur, Y., Bel, G., Boniol, F., Pairault, S., and Wiels, V. (2003). Robustness Analysis of Avionics Embedded Systems. In Proceedings of the 4th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Language, Compiler, and Tools for Embedded Systems (LCTES’2003), pages 123–132. Association for Computing Machinery.

Arlat, J., Fabre, J.-C., Rodríguez, M., and Salles, F. (2003). MAFALDA: A Series of Prototype Tools for the Assessment of Real Time COTS Microkernel-Based Systems, pages 141–156. Springer US.

Avizienis, A., Laprie, J.-C., Randell, B., and Landwehr, C. (2004). Basic concepts and taxonomy of dependable and secure computing. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 1(1):11–33.

Cámara, J., De Lemos, R., Laranjeiro, N., Ventura, R., and Vieira, M. (2015). Robustness-driven resilience evaluation of self-adaptive software systems. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 14(1):50–64.

Cavalli, A., Martins, E., and Morais, A. (2008). Use of invariant properties to evaluate the results of fault-injection-based robustness testing of protocol implementations. In Proceedings of the 1st IEEE International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation Workshop (ICST’2008), pages 21–30.

Foundation, T. L. (2025). Open vSwitch. [link]. Acessado em abril de 2025.

Fulber-Garcia, V., Duarte Jr, E. P., Huff, A., and dos Santos, C. R. (2020). Network service topology: Formalization, taxonomy and the custom specification model. Computer Networks, 178:107337.

Hutchison, C., Zizyte, M., Lanigan, P. E., Guttendorf, D., Wagner, M., Le Goues, C., and Koopman, P. (2018). Robustness Testing of Autonomy Software. In Proceedings of the 40th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice Track (ICSE-SEIP’2018), pages 276–285.

IEEE. (2001). IEEE Standard for IEEE Information Technology - Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX). Standard 1003.1-2001.

IEEE. (2017). Systems and Software Engineering–Vocabulary. Standard 24765:2017.

Jackson, E. J., Walls, M., Panda, A., Pettit, J., Pfaff, B., Rajahalme, J., Koponen, T., and Shenker, S. (2016). SoftFlow: A Middlebox Architecture for Open vSwitch. In 2016 Usenix Annual Technical Conference (USENIX ATC 16), pages 15–28.

Kernel (2025a). Introduction to Netlink – The Linux Kernel Documentation. [link]. Acessado em abril de 2025.

Kernel (2025b). Netlink Family Specifications. [link]. Acessado em abril de 2025.

Koopman, P. and DeVale, J. (1999). Comparing the robustness of POSIX operating systems. In Proceedings of the 29th IEEE International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing (FTCS’1999), pages 30–37. IEEE.

Laranjeiro, N., Agnelo, J., and Bernardino, J. (2021). A systematic review on software robustness assessment. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 54(4):1–65.

Laranjeiro, N., Canelas, S., and Vieira, M. (2008a). wsrbench: An On-Line Tool for Robustness Benchmarking. In Proceedings of the 5th IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC’2008), volume 2, pages 187–194. IEEE.

Laranjeiro, N., Vieira, M., and Madeira, H. (2008b). Experimental Robustness Evaluation of JMS Middleware. In Proceedings of the 5th IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC’2008), volume 1, pages 119–126. IEEE.

Neira-Ayuso, P., Gasca, R. M., and Lefevre, L. (2010). Communicating between the kernel and user-space in Linux using Netlink sockets. Software: Practice and Experience, 40(9):797–810.

Pfaff, B. and Davie, B. (2013). The Open vSwitch Database Management Protocol. RFC 7047.

Pfaff, B. et al. (2015). The Design and Implementation of Open vSwitch. In Proceedings of the 12th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI’2015), pages 117–130. USENIX.

Ruchel, L. V., Turchetti, R. C., and de Camargo, E. T. (2022). Evaluation of the robustness of SDN controllers ONOS and ODL. Computer Networks, 219:109403.

Sans, F. and Gamess, E. (2013). Analytical performance evaluation of different switch solutions. Journal of Computer Networks and Communications, 2013(1):953797.

Scott-Hayward, S. (2015). Design and deployment of secure, robust, and resilient SDN controllers. In Proceedings of the 2015 1st IEEE Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft), pages 1–5. IEEE.

Shanmugalingam, S., Ksentini, A., and Bertin, P. (2016). DPDK Open vSwitch performance validation with mirroring feature. In 2016 23rd International Conference on Telecommunications (ICT), pages 1–6. IEEE.

Tseng, J., Wang, R., Tsai, J., Wang, Y., and Tai, T.-Y. C. (2017). Accelerating Open vSwitch with integrated GPU. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Kernel-Bypass Networks, pages 7–12.

Turner, J. S. and Taylor, D. E. (2005). Diversifying the Internet. In Proceedings of the 17th IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference (GLOBECOM’2005), volume 2, pages 6–pp. IEEE.

Venâncio, G., Fulber-Garcia, V., Flauzino, J., Alchieri, E. A., and Duarte, E. P. (2024). Dependable Virtual Network Services: An Architecture for Fault-and Intrusion-tolerant SFCs. In 2024 IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN), pages 1–6. IEEE.

Yan, Y. and Wang, H. (2016). Open vSwitch VXLAN performance acceleration in cloud computing data center. In 2016 5th International Conference on Computer Science and Network Technology (ICCSNT), pages 567–571. IEEE.