Removing Roadblocks from SDN: OpenFlow Software Switch Performance on Intel DPDK

Abstract

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) promises the vision of more flexible and manageable networks, but requires certain level of programmability in the data plane. Such a flexible, programmable data plane implementation is OpenFlow (OF) which these days is seen as primary model of SDN data plane. In this paper we focus on the limitations of OF in packet switching performance. We share some measurement results we collected using an OF 1.3 prototype based on Intel's Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) and we also describe some optimization ideas. While OF 1.0 can be implemented on high-speed Ethernet switch hardware it has certain disadvantages in the area of flexibility. On the other hand OF 1.3 offers good-enough flexibility, but the poor performance of OF 1.3 implementations seems to represent a roadblock to SDN adoption. In this paper we argue that contrast to the common view, the overhead of flexibility is relatively low. We also argue that the apparent difference between a programmable data plane and a state of the art layered data plane is not primarily due to flexibility itself, but because the lack of optimization in case of flexible implementations.