Customizing virtual networks with partial FPGA reconfiguration

Recent FPGA-based implementations of network virtualization represent a significant step forward in network performance and scalability. Although these systems have been shown to provide orders of magnitude higher performance than solutions using software-based routers, straightforward reconfiguration of hardware-based virtual networks over time is a challenge. In this paper, we present the implementation of a reconfigurable network virtualization substrate that combines several partially-reconfigurable hardware virtual routers with software virtual routers. The update of hardware-based virtual networks in our system is supported via real-time partial FPGA reconfiguration. Hardware virtual networks can be dynamically reconfigured in a fraction of a second without affecting other virtual networks operating in the same FPGA. A heuristic has been developed to allocate virtual networks with diverse bandwidth requirements and network characteristics on this heterogeneous virtualization substrate. Experimental results show that the reconfigurable virtual routers can forward packets at line rate. Partial reconfiguration allows for 20x faster hardware reconfiguration than a previous approach which migrated hardware virtual networks to software.