Enabling Partial Offload of Virtualized Network Functions into the Programmable Data Plane

One of the key aspects hindering NFV adoption is the VNF performance, which is well below middleboxes. The offload of parts of a VNF into programmable data planes presents an alternative to mitigate this loss of performance. However, currently offload is only used locally on SmartNICs or in parts of an entire SFC, in a way that there are no platforms capable of offloading parts of a single VNF into programmable devices. In this paper we propose an architecture capable of managing the offload of elements of a VNF into programmable network devices. The architecture is composed of a VNF Platform with offload support, and a offload manager which communicates with the underlying infrastructure in order to allow the process. A prototype of the architecture was developed and evaluated, with results showing performance gains even in a completely virtualized test scenario, demonstrating the benefits provided by a offload platform.