Real-World Network Function Chaining - Lessons Learned - Benjamin Goldstone, Dell Technologies#

Benjamin Goldstone, Senior Network Engineer, Dell Technologies

• Why: Scaling network functions horizontally on standard compute with SR-IOV and standards-based L2 tricks, with open-sourced code, is directly relevant to virtualized/elastic network service design — and the "tier 1 service provider" provenance suggests real scale.
• What: Blueprints for building network function chaining platforms on standard compute — using Q-in-Q, VLAN translation, and SR-IOV — as delivered for real tier-1 service providers, with lessons learned and open-sourced code examples to start from. (from abstract only)
• How: Network functions run as scale-out software on commodity servers; L2 constructs (Q-in-Q, VLAN translation) plus SR-IOV provide the performance and multi-tenant separation needed to chain functions at provider scale.
• Where applicable: Service-provider and large-enterprise NFvi designs; requires SR-IOV-capable NICs and is L2-centric. The open-sourced code makes it checkable rather than anecdotal.