Containing Low Tail-Latencies in Packet Processing Using Lightweight Virtualization

Packet processing in current network scenarios faces complex challenges due to the increasing prevalence of requirements such as low latency, high reliability, and resource sharing. Virtualization is a potential solution to mitigate these challenges by enabling resource sharing and on-demand provisioning; however, ensuring high reliability and ultra-low latency remains a key challenge. Since bare-metal systems are often impractical because of high cost and space usage, and virtual machines require substantial additional resources, we evaluate the utilization of containers as a potential lightweight solution for low-latency-enabled packet processing. Herein, we discuss the benefits and drawbacks and encourage the use of container environments in low-latency packet processing when the degree of isolation of customer data is adequate and bare metal systems are unaffordable. Our results demonstrate that containers achieve similar latency performance with more predictable tail-latency behavior compared to bare metal packet processing. Further-more, we show that the overhead caused by virtualization is negligible in tail latencies.