Service Function Chaining Based on Segment Routing Using P4 and SR-IOV (P4-SFC).

In this paper we describe P4-SFC to support service function chaining (SFC) based on a single P4-capable switch and off-the-shelf components. It utilizes MPLS-based segment routing for traffic forwarding in the network and SR-IOV for efficient packet handling on hosts. We describe the P4-SFC architecture and demonstrate its feasibility by a prototype using the Tofino Edgecore Wedge 100BF-32X as P4 switch. Performance test show that L2 throughput for VNFs on a host is significantly larger when connected via SR-IOV with the host’s network interface card instead of over a software switch.