Customizing virtual networks with partial FPGA reconfiguration

Recent FPGA-based implementations of network virtualiza-tion represent a significant step forward in network perfor-mance and scalability. Although these systems have been shown to provide orders of magnitude higher performance than solutions using software-based routers, straightforward reconfiguration of hardware-based virtual networks over time is a challenge. In this paper, we present the implemen-tation of a reconfigurable network virtualization substrate that combines several partially-reconfigurable hardware vir-tual routers with software virtual routers. The update of hardware-based virtual networks in our system is supported via real-time partial FPGA reconfiguration. Hardware vir-tual networks can be dynamically reconfigured in a fraction of a second without affecting other virtual networks oper-ating in the same FPGA. A heuristic has been developed to allocate virtual networks with diverse bandwidth require-ments and network characteristics on this heterogeneous vir-tualization substrate. Experimental results show that the reconfigurable virtual routers can forward packets at line rate. Partial reconfiguration allows for 20x faster hardware reconfiguration than a previous approach which migrated hardware virtual networks to software