TY - JOUR
T1 - Reducing Latency in Virtual Machines
T2 - Enabling Tactile Internet for Human-Machine Co-Working
AU - Xiang, Zuo
AU - Gabriel, Frank
AU - Urbano, Elena
AU - Nguyen, Giang T.
AU - Reisslein, Martin
AU - Fitzek, Frank H.P.
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received October 10, 2018; revised March 07, 2019; accepted March 13, 2019. Date of publication March 21, 2019; date of current version April 16, 2019. Funded by Deutsche Telekom and by the German Research Foundation (DFG, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) as part of Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC 2050/1 – Project ID 390696704 – Cluster of Excellence “Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop” (CeTI) of Technische Universität Dresden. (Corresponding author: Martin Reisslein.) Z. Xiang and F. H. P. Fitzek are with the Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop (CeTI), Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany, and also with the Deutsche Telekom Chair, Technische Univer-sität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany (e-mail: zuo.xiang@tu-dresden.de; frank.fitzek@tu-dresden.de).
Publisher Copyright:
© 1983-2012 IEEE.
PY - 2019/5
Y1 - 2019/5
N2 - Software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) processed in multi-access edge computing (MEC) cloud systems have been proposed as critical paradigms for achieving the low latency requirements of the tactile Internet. While virtual network functions (VNFs) allow greater flexibility compared to hardware-based solutions, the VNF abstraction also introduces additional packet processing delays. In this paper, we investigate the practical feasibility of NFV with respect to the tactile Internet latency requirements. We develop, implement, and evaluate Chain-based Low latency VNF ImplemeNtation (CALVIN), a low-latency management framework for distributed Service Function Chains (SFCs). CALVIN classifies VNFs into elementary, basic, and advanced VNFs; moreover, CALVIN implements elementary and basic VNFs in the kernel space, while the advanced VNFs are implemented in the user space. Throughout, CALVIN employs a distributed mapping with one VNF per Virtual Machine (VM) in a MEC system. Furthermore, CALVIN avoids the metadata structure processing and batch processing of packets in the conventional Linux networking stack so as to achieve short per-packet latencies. Our rigorous measurements on off-the-shelf conventional networking and computing hardware demonstrate that CALVIN achieves round-trip times from a MEC ingress point via two elementary forwarding VNFs (one in kernel space and one in user space) and a MEC server to a MEC egress point on the order of 0.32 ms. Our measurements also indicate that MEC network coding and encryption are feasible for small 256 byte packets with an MEC latency budget of 0.35 ms; whereas, large 1400 byte packets can complete the network coding, but not the encryption within the 0.35 ms.
AB - Software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) processed in multi-access edge computing (MEC) cloud systems have been proposed as critical paradigms for achieving the low latency requirements of the tactile Internet. While virtual network functions (VNFs) allow greater flexibility compared to hardware-based solutions, the VNF abstraction also introduces additional packet processing delays. In this paper, we investigate the practical feasibility of NFV with respect to the tactile Internet latency requirements. We develop, implement, and evaluate Chain-based Low latency VNF ImplemeNtation (CALVIN), a low-latency management framework for distributed Service Function Chains (SFCs). CALVIN classifies VNFs into elementary, basic, and advanced VNFs; moreover, CALVIN implements elementary and basic VNFs in the kernel space, while the advanced VNFs are implemented in the user space. Throughout, CALVIN employs a distributed mapping with one VNF per Virtual Machine (VM) in a MEC system. Furthermore, CALVIN avoids the metadata structure processing and batch processing of packets in the conventional Linux networking stack so as to achieve short per-packet latencies. Our rigorous measurements on off-the-shelf conventional networking and computing hardware demonstrate that CALVIN achieves round-trip times from a MEC ingress point via two elementary forwarding VNFs (one in kernel space and one in user space) and a MEC server to a MEC egress point on the order of 0.32 ms. Our measurements also indicate that MEC network coding and encryption are feasible for small 256 byte packets with an MEC latency budget of 0.35 ms; whereas, large 1400 byte packets can complete the network coding, but not the encryption within the 0.35 ms.
KW - Low-latency network softwarization
KW - kernel space
KW - service function chain (SFC)
KW - tactile Internet
KW - user space
KW - virtualized network function (VNF)
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85063097866&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85063097866&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/JSAC.2019.2906788
DO - 10.1109/JSAC.2019.2906788
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85063097866
SN - 0733-8716
VL - 37
SP - 1098
EP - 1116
JO - IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
JF - IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
IS - 5
M1 - 8672612
ER -