Network service provisioning using system-level virtualization

This paper presents a transparent local acknowledgement network service using virtualization technology. Using this service, workstations in a reliable computer network can send and receive data without waifing tor acknowledgement packets from their remote peers. Instead, these packets are created locally by the proposed local network service. Most implementations of such network services either are embedded in application programs and libraries, such as TESLA, or change the protocol stack, requiring changes to the network module of the operating system Other solutions tor providing transparent network services that are based on virtualization, like VTL, are flawed with the extra overhead of hooking mechanisms at the user space and with the lack of support for dynamic configuration and arrangement of network services. To remove these flaws, we propose a new approach for implementing such transparent network services in the Xen virtual machine monitor in DomO. This way, there is no need to change and re-compile any application program or a guest operating system´ s kernel. In addition, this approach does not suffer from the extra overhead of context switching between the user and the kernel spaces. A proof-of-concept of local acknowledgement network service has been implemented using this approach. The evaluation results show the feasibility of the creation and the dynamic administration of transparent network services in the kernel mode using the proposed approach. Results also show higher bandwidth when this service is used in reliable networks.