In-Net: in-network processing for the masses
EuroSys '15 Proceedings of the Tenth European Conference on Computer
Systems, 2015
| Network Function Virtualization is pushing network operators to deploy commodity hardware that will be used to run middlebox functionality and processing on behalf of third parties: in effect, network operators are slowly but surely becoming in-network cloud providers. The market for innetwork clouds is large, ranging from content providers, mobile applications and even end-users. We show in this paper that blindly adopting cloud technologies in the context of in-network clouds is not feasible from both the security and scalability points of view. Instead we propose IN-NET, an architecture that allows untrusted endpoints as well as content-providers to deploy custom in-network processing to be run on platforms owned by network operators. IN-NET relies on static analysis to allow platforms to check whether the requested processing is safe, and whether it contradicts the operator's policies. We have implemented IN-NET and tested it in the wide-area, supporting a range of use-cases that are difficult to deploy today. Our experience shows that IN-NET is secure, scales to many users (thousands of clients on a single inexpensive server), allows for a wide-range of functionality, and offers benefits to end-users, network operators and content providers alike. |
In-Net: in-network processing for the masses