Currently, there is a strong effort of the research community in rethinking the Internet architecture to cope with its current limitations and support new requirements. Many researchers conclude that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for all of the user and network provider needs and thus advocate for a pluralist network architecture, which allows the coexistence of different protocol stacks running at the same time over the same physical substrate. In this paper, we investigate the advantages and limitations of the virtualization technologies for creating a pluralist environment for the Future Internet. We analyze two types of virtualization techniques, which provide multiple operating systems running on the same hardware, represented by Xen, or multiple network flows on the same switch, represented by OpenFlow. First, we define the functionalities needed by a Future Internet virtual network architecture and how Xen and OpenFlow provide them. We then analyze Xen and OpenFlow in terms of network programmability, processing, forwarding, control, and scalability. Finally, we carry out experiments with Xen and OpenFlow network prototypes, identifying the overhead incurred by each virtualization tool by comparing it with native Linux. Our experiments show that OpenFlow switch forwards packets as well as native Linux, achieving similar high forwarding rates. On the other hand, we observe that the high complexity involving Xen virtual machine packet forwarding limits the achievable packet rates. There is a clear trade-off between flexibility and performance, but we conclude that both Xen and OpenFlow are suitable platforms for network virtualization.
Abstract. Migration is an important feature for network virtualization because it allows the reallocation of virtual resources over the physical resources. In this paper, we investigate the characteristics of different migration models, according to their virtualization platforms. We show the main advantages and limitations of using the migration mechanisms provided by Xen and OpenFlow platforms. We also propose a migration model for Xen, using data and control plane separation, which outperforms the Xen standard migration. We developed two prototypes, using Xen and OpenFlow, and we performed evaluation experiments to measure the impact of the network migration on traffic forwarding.
Network testbeds strongly rely on virtualization that allows the simultaneous execution of multiple protocol stacks but also increases the management and control tasks. This paper presents a system to control and manage virtual networks based on the Xen platform. The goal of the proposed system is to assist network administrators to perform decision making in this challenging virtualized environment. The system management and control tasks consist of defining virtual networks, turning on, turning off, migrating virtual routers, and monitoring the virtual networks within few mouse clicks thanks to a user-friendly graphical interface. The administrator can also perform highlevel decisions, such as redefining the virtual network topology by using the plane-separation and loss-free live migration functionality, or saving energy by shutting down physical routers. Our performance tests assure the system has low response time; for instance, less than 3 minutes to create 4-node virtual networks.
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