A Measurement Study of Offloading Virtual Network Functions to the Edge
Citation:
S. R. Chaudhry, P. Liu, X. Wang, V. Cahill, M. Collier, 'A Measurement Study of Offloading Virtual Network Functions to the Edge', The Journal of Supercomputing, (2022) 78:1565–1582Download Item:
Chaudhry2022_Article_AMeasurementStudyOfOffloadingV.pdf (PDF) 1.103Mb
Abstract:
The deployment of virtual network functions (VNFs) at edge servers potentially impairs the performance of latency-sensitive applications due to their computational cost. This work considers a new approach to addressing this problem that provides line rate acceleration of VNFs by employing field-programmable gate array (FPGA) equipped edge servers. This approach has been validated by practical use cases with both TCP and UDP as underlying protocol on a physical testbed environment. We examine the performance implications of executing a security VNF at an FPGA-equipped edge server. We experimentally demonstrate reduced VNF execution latency and energy consumption for a real-time video streaming application in comparison with a software-only baseline. In particular, the results show that the approach lowers VNF execution latency and power consumption at the edge by up to 44% and 76%, respectively, in our experiments while satisfying time constraints and maintaining confidentiality with high scalability. We also highlight the potential research challenges to make this approach viable in practice.
Sponsor
Grant Number
IReL Consortium
Author's Homepage:
http://people.tcd.ie/vjcahillDescription:
PUBLISHED
Author: Cahill, Vinny
Type of material:
Journal ArticleCollections:
Series/Report no:
The Journal of Supercomputing;78;
Availability:
Full text availableKeywords:
field-programmable gate array (FPGA), high scalability, Task offloading, Data encryption, Hardware acceleration, Virtual network function (VNF), Edge computingSubject (TCD):
Smart & Sustainable Planet , TelecommunicationsDOI:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-021-03907-0Licences: