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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - REMEDIATE
T2 - Improving Network and Middlebox Resilience with Virtualisation
AU - Hill, Lyn
AU - Rotsos, Charalampos
AU - Edwards, Christopher
AU - Hutchison, David
PY - 2025/1/31
Y1 - 2025/1/31
N2 - The increasing demand for low-latency, high-bandwidth connectivity has introduced novel challenges to delivering strong resilience guarantees in production network environments. Closed hardware platforms, known as middleboxes, that lack visibility and support for state retention remain a key challenge for continuous service delivery during network failures. These middleboxes rarely employ recovery mechanisms of their own, inspiring renewed interest in the field of NFV in recent years due to this gap within the industry. The increasing availability of VNF capabilities in modern infrastructures offers an opportunity to exploit the flexibility of software and use hybrid architectures to improve resilience. REMEDIATE is a high-availability service that propagates state between unmodified hardware middleboxes and backup PNF or VNF appliances. The platform utilizes targeted packet mirroring to allow network devices to organically construct equivalent state and thus allow an easy transition between hardware and software. To demonstrate its viability, we have evaluated REMEDIATE against a wide range of common hardware middlebox use cases built using multiple open-source packet processing frameworks. Results show upwards of 90\% matching state with no observable delay to normal traffic or impact on its functionality.
AB - The increasing demand for low-latency, high-bandwidth connectivity has introduced novel challenges to delivering strong resilience guarantees in production network environments. Closed hardware platforms, known as middleboxes, that lack visibility and support for state retention remain a key challenge for continuous service delivery during network failures. These middleboxes rarely employ recovery mechanisms of their own, inspiring renewed interest in the field of NFV in recent years due to this gap within the industry. The increasing availability of VNF capabilities in modern infrastructures offers an opportunity to exploit the flexibility of software and use hybrid architectures to improve resilience. REMEDIATE is a high-availability service that propagates state between unmodified hardware middleboxes and backup PNF or VNF appliances. The platform utilizes targeted packet mirroring to allow network devices to organically construct equivalent state and thus allow an easy transition between hardware and software. To demonstrate its viability, we have evaluated REMEDIATE against a wide range of common hardware middlebox use cases built using multiple open-source packet processing frameworks. Results show upwards of 90\% matching state with no observable delay to normal traffic or impact on its functionality.
U2 - 10.1002/nem.2317
DO - 10.1002/nem.2317
M3 - Journal article
VL - 35
JO - International Journal of Network Management
JF - International Journal of Network Management
IS - 1
M1 - e2317
ER -