Interval Partitioning for Packet Classification in OpenFlow vSwitch

Abstract

Packet classification is a key factor for choosing proper action for incoming packet and has to be done fast and effectively, especially in OpenFlow. But OpenFlow vSwitch technology doesn't always allow to use some fast hardware technology for packet classification like TCAM (Ternary Content Addressable Memory). Instead of TCAM, decision tree methods are preferred solutions for fast classification in OpenFlow vSwitch in the literature. But most of these methods can cause the rule replication problem. As a result, while the duration of packet classification decreases, rule update duration increases. There are also rule partitioning methods in the literature to solve this problem, but the running time of these methods mostly depends on the number of rule fields. Also, some of these solutions don't overcome the rule replication problem. At that point, the main question of this letter is that how can we make the rule partitioning fast by both preventing the rule replication and allowing fast packet classification and rule update in OpenFlow vSwitch? To solve the rule partitioning problem, we propose a greedy based interval partitioning strategy. Here, the running time of the partitioning algorithm only depends on the rule number. After partitioning, we propose to use HyperCuts to construct decision trees for fast packet classification and rule update. According to performance evaluation results, we do the rule partitioning and rule updates faster than the PartitonSort method with the percentage of 88, 15, respectively. Also, we classify packet faster than the TupleMerge method with the percentage of 40 for online and 50 for offline scenarios.