OpenNF: Enabling Innovation in Network Function Control

Network functions virtualization (NFV) together with software-defined networking (SDN) has the potential to help operators sat-isfy tight service level agreements, accurately monitor and manipu-late network traffic, and minimize operating expenses. However, in scenarios that require packet processing to be redistributed across a collection of network function (NF) instances, simultaneously achieving all three goals requires a framework that provides effi-cient, coordinated control of both internal NF state and network forwarding state. To this end, we design a control plane called OpenNF. We use carefully designed APIs and a clever combina-tion of events and forwarding updates to address race conditions, bound overhead, and accommodate a variety of NFs. Our evalua-tion shows that OpenNF offers efficient state control without com-promising flexibility, and requires modest additions to NFs