HyperNF

Abstract

Network Function Virtualization has been touted as the silver bullet for tackling a number of operator problems, including vendor lock-in, fast deployment of new functionality, converged management, and lower expenditure since packet processing runs on inexpensive commodity servers. The reality, however, is that, in practice, it has proved hard to achieve the stable, predictable performance provided by hardware middleboxes, and so operators have essentially resorted to throwing money at the problem, deploying highly underutilized servers (e.g., one NF per CPU core) in order to guarantee high performance during peak periods and meet SLAs.