Hosting Virtual Networks on Commodity Hardware

This paper describes Trellis, a software platform for hosting multiple virtual networks on shared commodity hardware. Trellis allows each virtual network to define its own topology, control protocols, and forwarding tables, which lowers the barrier for deploying custom services on an isolated, reconfigurable, and programmable network, while amortizing costs by sharing the physical infrastructure. Trellis synthesizes two container-based virtualization technologies, VServer and NetNS, as well as a new tunneling mechanism, EGRE, into a coherent platform that enables high-speed virtual networks. We describe the design and implementation, of Trellis, including kernel-level performance optimizations, and evaluate its supported packet-forwarding rates against other virtualization technologies. We are in the process of upgrading the VINI facility to use Trellis. We also plan to release Trellis as part of MyVINI, a standalone software distribution that allows researchers and application developers to deploy their own virtual network hosting platforms.