TY - GEN
T1 - Honey for the Ice Bear - Dynamic eBPF in P4
AU - Simon, Manuel
AU - Stubbe, Henning
AU - Gallenmüller, Sebastian
AU - Carle, Georg
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Owner/Author.
PY - 2024/8/4
Y1 - 2024/8/4
N2 - Software updates typically require system reboots, leading to service downtimes. We aim to solve this problem for network components allowing updates while avoiding service degradation. In this paper, we explore the integration of eBPF into the P4 pipeline for efficient packet processing. This way, we combine the flexibility and dynamic adaptability of eBPF with the efficiency of P4. The integration enhances the power of applications and enables the network operator to provide customizable data paths as a service. Our solution allows updating the data path at runtime and without downtime. We implement the approach for the P4 target T4P4S, discuss different performance models, and share implementation insights. The evaluation focuses on the overhead in terms of throughput and the costs of code updates expressed in the latency of the related packets. We show that eBPF execution is possible with reasonable costs, promising dynamic network functions within P4.
AB - Software updates typically require system reboots, leading to service downtimes. We aim to solve this problem for network components allowing updates while avoiding service degradation. In this paper, we explore the integration of eBPF into the P4 pipeline for efficient packet processing. This way, we combine the flexibility and dynamic adaptability of eBPF with the efficiency of P4. The integration enhances the power of applications and enables the network operator to provide customizable data paths as a service. Our solution allows updating the data path at runtime and without downtime. We implement the approach for the P4 target T4P4S, discuss different performance models, and share implementation insights. The evaluation focuses on the overhead in terms of throughput and the costs of code updates expressed in the latency of the related packets. We show that eBPF execution is possible with reasonable costs, promising dynamic network functions within P4.
KW - Dynamic Network Function
KW - P4
KW - SDN
KW - eBPF
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85202430316
U2 - 10.1145/3672197.3673436
DO - 10.1145/3672197.3673436
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85202430316
T3 - eBPF 2024 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2024 Workshop on eBPF and Kernel Extensions, Part of: SIGCOMM 2024
SP - 44
EP - 50
BT - eBPF 2024 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2024 Workshop on eBPF and Kernel Extensions, Part of
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
T2 - 2024 ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on eBPF and Kernel Extensions, eBPF 2024
Y2 - 4 August 2024 through 8 August 2024
ER -