VF2X - Past Project

VF2x virtual network mapping algorithm

Goals

Distributed network testbeds like GENI aim to support a potentially large number of experiments simultaneously on a complex, widely distributed physical network by mapping each requested network onto a share or “slice” of physical hosts, switches and links. A significant challenge is network mapping: how to allocate virtual nodes, switches and links from the physical infrastructure so as to accurately emulate the requested network configurations.

Description

VF2x virtual network mapping system is based on the VF2 subgraph isomorphism detection algorithm designed for matching large graphs. VF2x incorporates several novel algorithmic improvements. These and careful implementation make VF2x perform more than two orders of magnitude faster than the fastest previously published algorithm.

To evaluate the performance of VF2x, we generated an extensive test workload based on analysis of a 5-year trace of experiments submitted to the popular Emulab testbed, and using the current ProtoGENI topology. The evaluation shows that VF2x can allocate resources to virtual networks on a large testbed in a matter of seconds using commodity hardware.

Downloads

VF2x is released under the Apache License Version 2.0.

Publications

  • VF2x: Fast, efficient virtual network mapping for real testbed workloads
    Qin Yin, Timothy Roscoe
    In Proceedings of TridentCom 2012, Thessaloniki, Greece, June 2012
    [PDF]