An Empirical Model of Packet Processing Delay of the Open vSwitch

Abstract: Network virtualization offers flexibility by decoupling virtual network from the underlying physical network. Software-Defined Network (SDN) could utilize the virtual network. For example, in Software-Defined Networks, the entire network can be run on commodity hardware and operating systems that use virtual elements. However, this could present new challenges of data plane performance. In this paper, we present an empirical model of the packet processing delay of a widely used OpenFlow virtual switch, the Open vSwitch. In the empirical model, we analyze the effect of varying Random Access Memory (RAM) and network parameters on the performance of the Open vSwitch. Our empirical model captures the non-network processing delays, which could be used in enhancing the network modeling and simulation.