Investigating isolation between virtual networks in case of congestion for a Pronto 3290 switch

Abstract

Performance isolation between virtual resources is one of the key features of network virtualization. It is typically realized by configuring queues with specific rate guarantees on the egress ports of network devices. The drawback of this architectural choice, however, is that traffic from several ingress ports may result in congestion on an egress port. Hence, the question arises to which extent isolation between virtual networks is realized in state-of-the-art hardware. This work aims at investigating whether congestion within one virtual network may affect the throughput performance of another virtual network. For that, measurements in a local testbed using a Pronto 3290 switch running an OpenFlow-enabling Pica8 firmware are performed.