Abstract: Today’s networks are responsible for more than routing packets and perform a wide range of functionality such as firewalls, proxies, and caches to improve performance and security. Specialized hardware devices used to run these functions but are no longer a great choice for cloud providers and large carriers due to high cost and low flexibility. Software-based networking technologies such as Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) promise to offer agility, flexibility and reduce the expenditures for network operators. However, there are challenges across the system, application, and service layers to fully achieve these benefits.

 

In this talk, I will present my research on designing new abstractions for network functions to run in software-based environments. First, I will present OpenNetVM, an open source NFV platform that allows researchers and developers to quickly develop and deploy network services inside of containers. I will show how OpenNetVM achieves high performance and flexibility by decoupling the service management from the packet processing. Then, I will present Microboxes, a novel service chaining abstraction designed to support transport and application layer network functions. I will show how Microboxes eliminates redundant processing and enables a modular design by breaking the “packet-centric” model used by existing NFV frameworks.

Short Bio: Guyue Liu (http://grace-liu.github.io/) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science at George Washington University, advised by Professor Timothy Wood. Her research interests are in the areas of networking systems, cloud computing, and edge computing. She has published research papers in prestigious conferences, including SIGCOMM and CoNEXT. She has interned and collaborated with leading research institutes, such as Microsoft Research and Hewlett Packard Labs. She received the B.S. from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in 2012. She has won the HP Helion OpenStack Scholarship, the First Place in GENI Competition, and an RTAS Best Student Paper Award.