Programmable data plane technologies enable the systematic reconfiguration of the low-
level processing steps applied to network packets and are key drivers toward realizing the …

Network slicing has become a fundamental property for next-generation networks,
especially because an inherent part of 5G standardisation is the ability for service providers …

Recently, network function virtualization has been proposed to transform from network
hardware appliances to software middleboxes. Normally, a demand needs to invoke several …

The move from hardware middleboxes to software network functions, as advocated by NFV,
has proven more challenging than expected. Developing new NFs remains a tedious …

Software-based sequential service chains in Network Function Virtualization (NFV) could
introduce significant performance overhead. Current acceleration efforts for NFV mainly …

Many algorithms for congestion control, scheduling, network measurement, active queue
management, and traffic engineering require custom processing of packets in the data plane …

Newly virtualized network functions (like firewalls, routers, and intrusion detection systems)
should be easy to consume. Despite recent efforts to improve their elasticity and high …

We present OpenBox—a software-defined framework for network-wide development,
deployment, and management of network functions (NFs). OpenBox effectively decouples …

Network middleboxes are growing in number and diversity. Middleboxes have been
deployed widely to complement the basic end-to-end functionality provided by the Internet …

We investigate the use of SmartNIC-accelerated servers to execute microservice-based
applications in the data center. By offloading suitable microservices to the SmartNIC's low …