Customizing Network Functions for High Performance Cloud Computing

A new cloud computing architecture introducing customization of network functions based on active network is studied. To flexibly reconfigure the network functions depending on the requirement of each cloud computing environment, network functions are deployed on a virtual machine. Customizable sequences of network functions are essential for cloud computing environments. The content-based packet marking mechanism is introduced to transfer packets to the next network function. The architecture for customizing network functions is experimentally demonstrated for high performance cloud computing with data caching and compression.