CAREER: Stateless Network Functions: Building a Better Network Through Disaggregation

University Of Colorado At Boulder, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

To improve performance, security, and reliability, network practitioners have moved away from the principle of a stateless network and added stateful processing to devices such as internet firewalls, load balancers, and intrusion detection systems. In doing so, networks have become increasingly complex and brittle. The research objective of this proposal is to provide the foundation for a transformative network architecture based on disaggregated virtual network functions. Developing this capability will improve the performance and operation of virtualized computing systems, including compute clouds, and ultimately make US information technology capabilities more competitive. This project will introduce the new systems and algorithms to make a disaggregated network function architecture possible, leveraging recent advances in distributed systems in low-latency data stores, and the unique properties of network processing that can be used to optimize the interface between the processing and state. Specifically, this proposal will: 1) develop the algorithmic and system underpinnings that overcome the challenges in achieving the needed performance in the face of added latency, overhead in accessing state, and concurrent execution; and 2) create novel network management capabilities that leverage disaggregated network functions to realize a network function infrastructure that is efficient and robust to load changes, component failures, and software or configuration updates.