High Performance Load Balancing Mechanism for Network Function Virtualization

Network load balancer is an important middle box component for NFV(network function virtualization) which can realize load distribution accurately, through which telecom operators can improve the business ability and extend capacity flexibly and efficiently. In this paper, we design and implement a high performance NFV-oriented network load balancing mechanism and system based on DPDK framework which is capable of running on common virtualization platforms. HVLB is designed based on the SDN (software defined networking) principle which splits the data forwarding and scheduling strategy effectively. It realizes the multi-cores and multi-queues based data processing architecture in user space, and ensures the data access isolation and task handling balance meanwhile. It uses the comprehensive abilities including network transmitting and computing ability to select the objective NF and forward the packet, which can guarantee the network performance and deliver the data packet accurately at the same time. Evaluations based on a prototype of KVM platform show that our mechanism significantly improves the performance of packet processing and forwarding compared with the LVS, and it also obtains the line speed processing with 64 byte UDP packet.