Virtual Device Passthrough for High Speed VM Networking

Supporting network I/O at high packet rates in virtual machines is fundamental for the deployment of Cloud data centers and Network Function Virtualization. Historically, SR-IOV and hardware passthrough were thought as the only viable solution to reduce the high cost of virtualization. In previous work [11] we showed how even plain device emulation can achieve VM-to-VM speeds of millions of packets per second (Mpps), though still at least 3 times slower than bare metal. In this paper we present architectural solutions to fill this gap. Our design, called ptnetmap, implements a virtual passthrough network device based on the netmap framework. ptnetmap allows VMs to connect to any netmap port (physical devices, software switches, netmap pipes), conserving the speed and isolation of the native netmap system, and removing the constraints of hardware passthrough. Our work includes two key features not present in previous related works with comparable performance: we provide a high speed p...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2015
• Where: ANCS
• Authors: Stefano Garzarella, Giuseppe Lettieri, Luigi Rizzo
• Keywords: ANCS 2015, Computer Networks