HP-SFC: Hybrid Protection Mechanism Using Source Routing for Service Function Chaining

Service Function Chaining (SFC) is an emerging paradigm aiming to provide flexible service deployment, lifecycle management, and scaling in a micro-service architecture. SFC is defined as a logically connected list of ordered Service Functions (SFs) that require high availability to maintain user ex...

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Main Authors: Syed M. Raza, Haekwon Jeong, Moonseong Kim, Hyunseung Choo
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2021-06-01
Series:Applied Sciences
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/11/5245
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spelling doaj-eec13a12c435491fa14725214465e1982021-06-30T23:21:35ZengMDPI AGApplied Sciences2076-34172021-06-01115245524510.3390/app11115245HP-SFC: Hybrid Protection Mechanism Using Source Routing for Service Function ChainingSyed M. Raza0Haekwon Jeong1Moonseong Kim2Hyunseung Choo3Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 16419, KoreaDefense Security Institute, Korea Ministry of National Defense, Seoul 04383, KoreaDepartment of IT Convergence Software, Seoul Theological University, Bucheon 14754, KoreaDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 16419, KoreaService Function Chaining (SFC) is an emerging paradigm aiming to provide flexible service deployment, lifecycle management, and scaling in a micro-service architecture. SFC is defined as a logically connected list of ordered Service Functions (SFs) that require high availability to maintain user experience. The SFC protection mechanism is one way to ensure high availability, and it is achieved by proactively deploying backup SFs and installing backup paths in the network. Recent studies focused on ensuring the availability of backup SFs, but overlooked SFC unavailability due to network failures. This paper extends our previous work to propose a Hybrid Protection mechanism for SFC (HP-SFC) that divides SFC into segments and combines the merits of local and global failure recovery approaches to define an installation policy for backup paths. A novel labeling technique labels SFs instead of SFC, and they are stacked as per the order of SFs in a particular SFC before being inserted into a packet header for traffic steering through segment routing. The emulation results showed that HP-SFC recovered SFC from failure within 20–25 ms depending on the topology and reduced backup paths’ flow entries by at least 8.9% and 64.5% at most. Moreover, the results confirmed that the segmentation approach made HP-SFC less susceptible to changes in network topology than other protection schemes.https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/11/5245failure protectionservice function chainingnetwork function virtualizationsoftware-defined networkingsegment routing
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Syed M. Raza
Haekwon Jeong
Moonseong Kim
Hyunseung Choo
spellingShingle Syed M. Raza
Haekwon Jeong
Moonseong Kim
Hyunseung Choo
HP-SFC: Hybrid Protection Mechanism Using Source Routing for Service Function Chaining
Applied Sciences
failure protection
service function chaining
network function virtualization
software-defined networking
segment routing
author_facet Syed M. Raza
Haekwon Jeong
Moonseong Kim
Hyunseung Choo
author_sort Syed M. Raza
title HP-SFC: Hybrid Protection Mechanism Using Source Routing for Service Function Chaining
title_short HP-SFC: Hybrid Protection Mechanism Using Source Routing for Service Function Chaining
title_full HP-SFC: Hybrid Protection Mechanism Using Source Routing for Service Function Chaining
title_fullStr HP-SFC: Hybrid Protection Mechanism Using Source Routing for Service Function Chaining
title_full_unstemmed HP-SFC: Hybrid Protection Mechanism Using Source Routing for Service Function Chaining
title_sort hp-sfc: hybrid protection mechanism using source routing for service function chaining
publisher MDPI AG
series Applied Sciences
issn 2076-3417
publishDate 2021-06-01
description Service Function Chaining (SFC) is an emerging paradigm aiming to provide flexible service deployment, lifecycle management, and scaling in a micro-service architecture. SFC is defined as a logically connected list of ordered Service Functions (SFs) that require high availability to maintain user experience. The SFC protection mechanism is one way to ensure high availability, and it is achieved by proactively deploying backup SFs and installing backup paths in the network. Recent studies focused on ensuring the availability of backup SFs, but overlooked SFC unavailability due to network failures. This paper extends our previous work to propose a Hybrid Protection mechanism for SFC (HP-SFC) that divides SFC into segments and combines the merits of local and global failure recovery approaches to define an installation policy for backup paths. A novel labeling technique labels SFs instead of SFC, and they are stacked as per the order of SFs in a particular SFC before being inserted into a packet header for traffic steering through segment routing. The emulation results showed that HP-SFC recovered SFC from failure within 20–25 ms depending on the topology and reduced backup paths’ flow entries by at least 8.9% and 64.5% at most. Moreover, the results confirmed that the segmentation approach made HP-SFC less susceptible to changes in network topology than other protection schemes.
topic failure protection
service function chaining
network function virtualization
software-defined networking
segment routing
url https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/11/5245
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