Fast Userspace Networking for the Rest of Us
Fuente:
arXiv
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| Autori principali: | , , , , , , , |
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| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866913689403129856 |
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| author | Sanaee, Alireza Jabrayilov, Vahab Marinos, Ilias Kalia, Anuj Saxena, Divyanshu Goyal, Prateesh Kaffes, Kostis Antichi, Gianni |
| author_facet | Sanaee, Alireza Jabrayilov, Vahab Marinos, Ilias Kalia, Anuj Saxena, Divyanshu Goyal, Prateesh Kaffes, Kostis Antichi, Gianni |
| contents | After a decade of research in userspace network stacks, why do new solutions remain inaccessible to most developers? We argue that this is because they ignored (1) the hardware constraints of public cloud NICs (vNICs) and (2) the flexibility required by applications. Concerning the former, state-of-the-art proposals rely on specific NIC features (e.g., flow steering, deep buffers) that are not broadly available in vNICs. As for the latter, most of these stacks enforce a restrictive execution model that does not align well with cloud application requirements.
We propose a new userspace network stack, Machnet, built for public cloud VMs. Central to Machnet is a new ''Least Common Denominator'' model, a conceptual NIC with a minimal feature set supported by all kernel-bypass vNICs. The challenge is to build a new solution with performance comparable to existing stacks while relying only on basic features (e.g., no flow steering, no RSS reconfiguration). Machnet uses a microkernel design to provide higher flexibility in application execution compared to a library OS design; we show that microkernels' inter-process communication overhead is negligible on large cloud networks. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_09281 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Fast Userspace Networking for the Rest of Us Sanaee, Alireza Jabrayilov, Vahab Marinos, Ilias Kalia, Anuj Saxena, Divyanshu Goyal, Prateesh Kaffes, Kostis Antichi, Gianni Networking and Internet Architecture Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing Operating Systems After a decade of research in userspace network stacks, why do new solutions remain inaccessible to most developers? We argue that this is because they ignored (1) the hardware constraints of public cloud NICs (vNICs) and (2) the flexibility required by applications. Concerning the former, state-of-the-art proposals rely on specific NIC features (e.g., flow steering, deep buffers) that are not broadly available in vNICs. As for the latter, most of these stacks enforce a restrictive execution model that does not align well with cloud application requirements. We propose a new userspace network stack, Machnet, built for public cloud VMs. Central to Machnet is a new ''Least Common Denominator'' model, a conceptual NIC with a minimal feature set supported by all kernel-bypass vNICs. The challenge is to build a new solution with performance comparable to existing stacks while relying only on basic features (e.g., no flow steering, no RSS reconfiguration). Machnet uses a microkernel design to provide higher flexibility in application execution compared to a library OS design; we show that microkernels' inter-process communication overhead is negligible on large cloud networks. |
| title | Fast Userspace Networking for the Rest of Us |
| topic | Networking and Internet Architecture Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing Operating Systems |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.09281 |