We propose a high-performance platform based on Docker containers and DPDK for the deployment of multiple virtual middleboxes.
The platform provides NFs with a higher abstraction layer for the underlying hardware, to facilitate NF deployment, packet processing, and inter-NF communication. Our evaluation shows that the platform provides proper isolation of NFs with 4% overhead. For a service chain with numbered NFs, our solution outperforms the Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) platform with 7x the throughput.
