Federated testbeds enable collaborative research by providing access to diverse resources, including computing power, storage, and specialized hardware like GPUs, programmable switches and smart Network Interface Cards (NICs). Efficiently sharing these resources across federated institutions is challenging, particularly when resources are scarce and costly. GPUs are crucial for AI and machine learning research, but their high demand and expense make efficient management essential. Similarly, advanced experimentation on programmable data plane requires very expensive programmable switches (e.g., based on P4) and smart NICs. This paper introduces SHARY (SHaring Any Resource made easY), a dynamic reservation system that simplifies resource booking and management in federated environments. We show that SHARY can be adopted for heterogenous resources, thanks to an adaptation layer tailored for the specific resource considered. Indeed, it can be integrated with FIGO (Federated Infrastructure for GPU Orchestration), which enhances GPU availability through a demand-driven sharing model. By enabling real-time resource sharing and a flexible booking system, FIGO improves access to GPUs, reduces costs, and accelerates research progress. SHARY can be also integrated with SUP4RNET platform to reserve the access of P4 switches.

With the rise of the Network Softwarization era, eBPF has become a hot technology for efficient packet processing on commodity hardware. However the development of custom eBPF solutions is a challenging process that requires highly qualified human resources. Indeed, in eBPF, it is difficult to devise truly modular applications since the development model does not favour the use of pre-compiled functions and libraries. In addition, for safety purposes, each eBFF program must pass a binary code verifier of the Linux kernel, which may increase the difficulty of the development process. To overcome such difficulties and enable a new development model, in this paper we propose the eCLAT framework with the goal to lower the learning curve of engineers by re-using eBPF code in a programmable way. eCLAT offers a high level programming abstraction to eBPF based network programmability, allowing a developer to create custom application logic with no need of understanding the complex details of regular eBPF programming. A developer can write eCLAT scripts in a python-like language to compose eBPF programs. To support such abstraction at the eBPF level, we created an eBPF framework called HIKe which brings code reuse and modularity in eBPF. The eCLAT/HIKe solution does not require any kernel modification. The new development model is tested through two concrete examples and compared with other proposed frameworks in the eBPF world.

The Segment Routing (SR) architecture is based on source routing. Within an SR enabled network, a list of instructions called segments can be added to the packet headers to influence the forwarding and the processing of the packets. In SRv6 (Segment Routing over IPv6 data plane) the segments are represented with IPv6 addresses, which are 16 bytes long. There are some SRv6 service scenarios that may require to carry a large number of segments in the IPv6 packet headers. Reducing the size of these overheads is useful to minimize the impact on MTU (Maximum Transfer Unit) and to enable SRv6 on legacy hardware devices with limited processing capabilities that could suffer from the long headers. In this paper we present the Micro SID solution for the efficient representation of segment identifiers. The proposed Micro SID solution has been implemented on three different architectures (VPP, Linux, P4) and interoperability tests have been performed. We also analyze the reduction of the header size that can be achieved with Micro SIDs and compare it with other proposals for segment list compression. Our results show that the header size can be reduced up to 75%. Finally, we mention that a fundamental asset of the proposed Micro SID solution is the full compatibility and seamless interoperability with existing SRv6 architecture.

With the rise of the Network Softwarization era, eBPF has become a hot technology for efficient packet processing on commodity hardware. However the development of custom eBPF solutions is a challenging process that requires highly qualified human resources. In this paper we propose the eCLAT framework with the goal to lower the learning curve of engineers by re-using eBPF code in a programmable way. eCLAT offers a high level programming abstraction to eBPF based network programmability, allowing a developer to create custom application logic in eBPF with no need of understanding the complex details of regular eBPF programming. To support such modularity at the eBPF level, we created an eBPF library that implements a virtual machine, called HIKe VM. The HIKe VM library extends the conventional eBPF programs so that they can be integrated in eCLAT. The eCLAT/HIKe solution does not require any kernel modification.

Network operators are facing significant challenges meeting the demand for more bandwidth, agile infrastructures, innovative services, while keeping costs low. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Cloud Computing are emerging as key trends of 5G network architectures, providing flexibility, fast instantiation times, support of Commercial Off The Shelf hardware and significant cost savings. NFV leverages Cloud Computing principles to move the data-plane network functions from expensive, closed and proprietary hardware to the so-called Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). In this paper we deal with the management of virtual computing resources (Unikernels) for the execution of VNFs. This functionality is performed by the Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM) in the NFV MANagement and Orchestration (MANO) reference architecture. We discuss the instantiation process of virtual resources and propose a generic reference model, starting from the analysis of three open source VIMs, namely OpenStack, Nomad and OpenVIM. We improve the aforementioned VIMs introducing the support for special-purpose Unikernels and aiming at reducing the duration of the instantiation process. We evaluate some performance aspects of the VIMs, considering both stock and tuned versions. The VIM extensions and performance evaluation tools are available under a liberal open source licence.

Segment Routing over IPv6 (SRv6 in short) is a networking architecture suitable for both IP backbones and datacenters. The research, standardization and implementation of this architecture are actively progressing and SRv6 is already adopted in a number of large scale deployments. Effective solutions for Performance Monitoring (PM) of SRv6 networks are strongly needed and there is a lot of activity in this area. A full blown Performance Monitoring solution needs to include: i) Data Plane (as needed to measure metrics such as packet loss and delay); ii) Control Plane (to send commands to the monitoring entities in the nodes); iii) Management Plane (e.g., to collect the measured metrics). Moreover, Big-Data tools and solutions can be applied inside or above the traditional Management Plane boundaries to store and analyze the collected data. In this article we describe SRv6-PM, a solution for Performance Monitoring of SRv6 networks that deals with all the aspects discussed above. SRv6-PM features a cloud-native architecture that supports: i) the ingestion, processing, storage and visualization of PM data using Big-Data tools; ii) the SDN-based control of network routers to drive the performance monitoring operations. In particular, we focus on Loss Monitoring and consider a solution capable of tracking single packet loss events operating in near-real time (e.g., with a time granularity in the order of 10-20 seconds). SRv6-PM is released as open source. We offer a re-usable and extensible platform that can be automatically deployed in different environments, from a single host to multiple servers on private/public clouds and includes a set of Big-Data tools and the SDN control plane. We also provide a reproducible Data Plane environment for PM experiments in SRv6 networks based on the Mininet emulator.

The Segment Routing (SR) architecture is based on loose source routing. A list of instructions, called segments can be added to the packet headers, to influence the forwarding and the processing of the packets in an SR enabled network. In SRv6 (Segment Routing over IPv6 data plane) the segments are represented with IPv6 addresses, which are 16 bytes long. There are some SRv6 service scenarios that may require to carry a large number of segments in the IPv6 packet headers. Reducing the size of these overheads is useful to minimize the impact on MTU (Maximum Transfer Unit) and to enable SRv6 on legacy hardware devices with limited processing capabilities that could suffer the long headers. In this paper we present the Micro SID solution for the efficient representation of segment identifiers. With this solution, the length of the segment list can be drastically reduced.

Segment Routing over IPv6 (SRv6 in short) is a networking solution for IP backbones and datacenters, which has been recently adopted in several of large scale network deployments. The SRv6 research, standardization and implementation activities are going on at a remarkable pace. In particular, a number of Internet Drafts have been submitted related to the Performance Monitoring (PM) of flows in an SRv6 network. In this paper we discuss the proposed PM approaches, considering both data plane and control plane aspects and focusing on loss monitoring. Then we describe the implementation of a per-flow packet loss measurement (PF-PLM) solution based on the “alternate marking” method. Our implementation is based on Linux kernel networking and it is open source. We describe a platform that can be used to validate the standardization proposals from a functional perspective and the implemented solution from the performance point of view. We analyze two different design choices for the implementation of PF-PLM and evaluate their impact on the maximum forwarding throughput of a software based (Linux) router.