SRv6Pipes: Enabling in-network bytestream functions

IPv6 Segment Routing is a recent IPv6 extension that is generating a lot of interest among researchers and in industry. Thanks to IPv6 SR, network operators can better control the paths followed by packets inside their networks. This provides enhanced traffic engineering capabilities and is key to support Service Function Chaining (SFC). With SFC, an end-to-end service is the composition of a series of in-network services. Simple services such as NAT, accounting or stateless firewalls can be implemented on a per-packet basis. However, more interesting services like transparent proxies, transparent compression or encryption, transcoding, etc. require functions that operate on the bytestream. In this paper, we extend the IPv6 implementation of Segment Routing in the Linux kernel to enable network functions that operate on the bytestream and not on a per-packet basis. Our SRv6Pipes enable network architects to design end-to-end services as a series of in-network functions. We evaluate the performance of our implementation with different microbenchmarks