Industry Paper: On the Performance of Commodity Hardware for Low Latency and Low Jitter Packet Processing
Paper in proceeding, 2020

With the introduction of Virtual Network Functions (VNF), network processing is no longer done solely on special purpose hardware. Instead, deploying network functions on commodity servers increases flexibility and has been proven effective for many network applications. However, new industrial applications and the Internet of Things (IoT) call for event-based systems and midleware that can deliver ultra-low and predictable latency, which present a challenge for the packet processing infrastructure they are deployed on. In this industry experience paper, we take a hands-on look on the performance of network functions on commodity servers to determine the feasibility of using them in existing and future latency-critical event-based applications. We identify sources of significant latency (delays in packet processing and forwarding) and jitter (variation in latency) and we propose application- and system-level improvements for removing or keeping them within required limits. Our results show that network functions that are highly optimized for throughput perform sub-optimally under the very different requirements set by latency-critical applications, compared to latency-optimized versions that have up to 9.8X lower latency. We also show that hardware-aware, system-level configurations, such as disabling frequency scaling technologies, greatly reduce jitter by up 2.4X and lead to more predictable latency.

packet processing

latency

Industry 4.0

jitter

Author

Charalampos Stylianopoulos

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Networks and Systems (Chalmers)

Magnus Almgren

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Networks and Systems (Chalmers)

Olaf Landsiedel

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Networks and Systems (Chalmers)

Marina Papatriantafilou

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Networks and Systems (Chalmers)

Trevor Neish

Ericsson

Linus Gillander

Ericsson

Bengt Johansson

Ericsson

Staffan Bonnier

Ericsson

DEBS 2020 - Proceedings of the 14th ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event-Based Systems

177-182 3403591

14th ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event-Based Systems, DEBS 2020
Montreal. Virtual, Canada,

Integrated cyber-physical solutions for intelligent distribution grid with high penetration of renewables (UNITED-GRID)

European Commission (EC) (EC/H2020/773717), 2017-11-01 -- 2020-04-30.

Subject Categories

Computer Engineering

Telecommunications

Communication Systems

DOI

10.1145/3401025.3403591

More information

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1/3/2024 9