Building SDN Router
Customer Story
Customer Story
A large telecommunications company was facing a major challenge: their existing hardware routers were expensive, inflexible, and difficult to scale. They were also locked into a contract with a single vendor, which limited their options and made it difficult to negotiate better prices. The company was looking for a solution that would give them more freedom and flexibility. They wanted a router that was scalable, affordable, and easy to manage. They also wanted to avoid vendor lock-in.
Software routers, especially those leveraging VPP (Vector Packet Processing) and FRR (Free Range Routing) using Intel DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit) line cards, can significantly mitigates these challenges.
What is VPP ?
VPP is an open-source, high-performance, scalable, and flexible software solution that offers network routing and forwarding functions. By harnessing the power of vector processing to process multiple packets simultaneously, it delivers significant performance enhancements.
Evaluating VPP Performance
While the full performance potential of VPP remains untapped, numerous presentations and benchmark tests have demonstrated its huge power:
– Comfortably manage to forward over 100 Gbps at the edge
– FD.io claims VPP can function as a Terabit software router, as asserted in their whitepapers and presentations.
– VPP has demonstrated capabilities of encrypting traffic and forwarding at speeds comparable to hardware routers processing unencrypted traffic.
– It has also shown capacity for loading more than 500,000 routes per second in FIB.
Source:
• https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/jim-Thompson.pdf
• https://fd.io/docs/whitepapers/FDioVPPwhitepaperJuly2017.pdf
• https://fd.io/presentations/Fdio-Icelake-Demo-v11i.pdf
• https://theultramarine19.github.io/data/VPP_report.pdf
What is FRR ?
Free Range Routing (FRR) is an advanced, open-source routing protocol suite that facilitates dynamic routing on networks. It provides support for both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols, and includes features such as BGP, OSPF, and RIP, among others. FRR’s primary advantage is its ability to integrate with various open networking applications, providing a unified solution for efficient network management. A number of vendors are leveraging FRR in their platforms, including Cumulus Networks, 6WIND, NetDEF, Orange, and Big Switch Networks.
The Benefits of Cost Reduction and Enhanced Agility
Integrating FRR with VPP, we are developing a highly efficient, contemporary, disaggregated, and scalable software router. Notably, it accommodates cutting-edge technologies such as EVPN-VXLAN and Segment Routing. Furthermore, it provides the option to forward everything in an encrypted format, thereby enhancing the security of your infrastructure.
Deploying software routers on commodity hardware can substantially slash the cost of network infrastructure, providing a cost-effective alternative to expensive hardware routers that also bind organizations to specific vendors. In terms of agility, software routers surpass their hardware counterparts in ease of management and deployment, enabling network operators to promptly introduce new services and adjust to fluctuating customer demand.
Our Proficiency in Software Routers
We have guided numerous clients in implementing software routers based on VPP and FRR using Intel DPDK line cards. Our notable achievements include helping a major telecom operator reach 100 Gbps throughput for each customer and enabling a large enterprise to secure global connectivity.
Conclusion
Software routers utilizing VPP and FRR with Intel DPDK line cards present a host of advantages over conventional hardware routers, including enhanced performance, cost reduction, and increased flexibility. We have successfully installed these routers for various clients, resulting in substantial performance upgrades and cost savings.
