Network-virtualization nodes that support mutually independent development and evolution of node components

“Virtualization nodes” (VNodes) for programmable network-virtualization platforms are being developed. Criteria for “clean” network-virtualization are devised and applied to this platform and slices (virtual networks). These criteria meet one of the challenges targeted by the Virtualization Node Project, that is, to enable mutually independent development and evolution of components (namely, computational components called programmers and networking components called redirectors) in VNodes. To meet this challenge, the redirector plays the central role in implementing the following two functions of VNodes. The first function is creation of mapping between virtual links to external physical paths and mapping between virtual links to internal physical paths, which makes it possible to hide various alternative computational components in the VNode from the external network and to hide these external-network representations from the internal components. The second function is implementation of high-performance data conversion, which connects the external and internal data formats or mappings, by using an add-on card with a network processor. Two results are obtained from the performance evaluation of these functions. First, the overhead caused by mapping creation can be hidden by other tasks under normal conditions, but the overhead caused by mapping deletion must be reduced. Second, the data-conversion rate is half the wire rate, which should be increased in future work.