The Software Defined Network Function Virtualization (SDNFV) project is a research collaboration spanning University of California Riverside and George Washington University, led by K.K. Ramakrishnan and Tim Wood. We seek to build highly dynamic software-based networks that provide far greater flexibility than hardware-based approaches, yet still obtain high performance and low cost.
The basis for much of our research is openNetVM, a DPDK based high performance NFV platform that allows network functions such as security monitors, switches, WAN optimizers, etc. to be deployed in Docker containers. openNetVM is SDN-enabled, allowing the network controller to provide rules that dictate what network functions need to process each packet flow.
Our work is supported in part by NSF grants CNS-1422362 and CNS-1522546, and US Army Research grant W911NF-15-1-0508.
Software Releases
Our NFV platform openNetVM is now available for testing. Read more about openNetVM here.
Publications
- Advancing Network Function Virtualization with Programmable NICs. Zhen Ni, Guyue Liu, Dennis Afanasev, Timothy Wood, and Jinho Hwang. IEEE International Symposium on Local and Metropolitan Area Networks (LANMAN 19), July 2019.
- NetML: An NFV Platform with Efficient Support for Machine Learning Applications. Aditya Dhakal and K. K. Ramakrishnan. IEEE Conference on Network Softwarization, June 2019.
- REINFORCE: Achieving Efficient Failure Resiliency for Network Function Virtualization based Services. Sameer G. Kulkarni, Guyue Liu, K. K. Ramakrishnan, Mayutan Arumaithurai, Timothy Wood, and Xiaoming Fu. ACM CoNEXT, December 2018.
- Microboxes: High Performance NFV with Customizable, Asynchronous TCP Stacks and Dynamic Subscriptions. Guyue Liu, Yuxin Ren, Mykola Yurchenko, K.K. Ramakrishnan, and Timothy Wood. ACM SIGCOMM, August 2018.
- NFVnice: Dynamic Backpressure and Scheduling for NFV Service Chains. Sameer G Kulkarni, Wei Zhang, Jinho Hwang, Shriram Rajagopalan, K.K. Ramakrishnan, Timothy Wood, Mayutan Arumaithurai, and Xiaoming Fu. ACM SIGCOMM, August 2017.
- Design Challenges for High Performance, Scalable NFV Interconnects. Guyue Liu, K. K. Ramakrishnan, Mike Schlansker, Jean Tourrilhes, and Timothy Wood. ACM Workshop on Kernel Bypass Networks, August 2017.
- Flurries: Countless Fine-Grained NFs for Flexible Per-Flow Customization. Wei Zhang, Jinho Hwang, Shriram Rajagopalan, K. K. Ramakrishnan, Timothy Wood. ACM Co-NEXT, December 2016.
- SDNFV: Flexible and Dynamic Software Defined Control of an Application- and Flow-Aware Data Plane. Wei Zhang, Guyue Liu, Ali Mohhamadkhan, Jinho Hwang, K. K. Ramakrishnan, and Timothy Wood. ACM/IFIP/USENIX Middleware, December 2016.
- Netalytics: Cloud-Scale Application Performance Monitoring with SDN and NFV. Guyue Liu, Michael Trotter, Yuxin Ren, Timothy Wood. ACM/IFIP/USENIX Middleware, December 2016.
- OpenNetVM: A Platform for High Performance Network Service Chains. Wei Zhang, Guyue Liu, Wenhui Zhang, Neel Shah, Phil Lopreiato, Gregoire Todeschi, K.K. Ramakrishnan, and Timothy Wood. ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Hot Topics in Middleboxes and Network Function Virtualization, August 2016.
- Towards a Software-Based Network: Integrating Software Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualization. Timothy Wood, K. K. Ramakrishnan, Jinho Hwang, Grace Liu, and Wei Zhang. IEEE Networks Magazine, June 2015.
- Virtual Function Placement and Traffic Steering in Flexible and Dynamic Software Defined Networks. Ali Mohammadkhan, Sheida Ghapani, Guyue Liu, Wei Zhang, K. K. Ramakrishnan and Timothy Wood. IEEE International Workshop on Local and Metropolitan Area Networks (LANMAN), April 2015.
- Cloud-Scale Application Performance Monitoring with SDN and NFV. Guyue Liu, Timothy Wood. IEEE International Workshop on Cloud Analytics (IWCA15), March 2015.
- SmartSwitch: Blurring the Line Between Network Infrastructure & Cloud Applications. Wei Zhang, Timothy Wood, K.K. Ramakrishnan, Jinho Hwang. Usenix Workshop on Hot Topics in Cloud Computing (HotCloud), June 2014.
- Load Balancing of Heterogeneous Workloads in Memcached Clusters. Wei Zhang, Timothy Wood, H. Howie Huang, Jinho Hwang, K.K. Ramakrishnan. Usenix International Workshop on Feedback Computing, June 2014.
- NetVM: High Performance and Flexible Networking using Virtualization on Commodity Platforms. Jinho Hwang, K.K. Ramakrishnan, Timothy Wood. Usenix Symposium on Networked System Design and Implementation (NSDI), April 2014. Extended TNSM journal version.