FlexGate: High-performance Heterogeneous Gateway in Data Centers

Large-scale data centers support various applications and process/issue terabits per second traffic from/to Internet. On the boundary of data center, the gateway needs to execute a series of network functions for each incoming packet. The Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technology leverages commodity servers to flexibly implement network functions. This solution provides satisfying processing and storage capability. However, state-of-the-art NFV platforms can merely process network functions at the line rate of 10~40Gbps. Supporting throughput of terabits per second requires dozens or even hundreds of servers operating exclusively for network functions, which is not only expensive but also difficult to maintain. On the other hand, programmable packet processing hardwares proposed in recent years offer a new platform for implementing network functions. They can execute user-defined packet processing logics at ultra-high line rate while containing limited processing and storage resources.

The software network function platform and programmable packet processing hardware own complementary features, which inspire us to combine them together to propose the heterogeneous gateway platform called FlexGate. Based on the observations of traffic pattern and function features, we propose an efficient way to deploy network functions and matching rules in hardware/software to give full play to their respective advantages. In programmable hardware, to further optimize resource utilization, a new load balance scheme is proposed to spread load. Experiments show that FlexGate can execute realistic workload at the rate of at least 1.5Tbps, and the average latency is 1.28μs.