Procera pushes the NFV performance envelope; hits 1.8Tbps scale-out using 100GE interfaces

PacketLogic/V uses Mellanox 100GE NICs and 1RU COTS servers for high performance virtualized customer experience and network intelligence

Fremont, Calif., February 23, 2017 — Operators will soon be able to handle much higher traffic volumes through Virtualized Network Functions, as Procera Networks today reached a new industry benchmark for NFV performance. Procera has hit 1.8Tbps data throughput for its virtualized PacketLogic network intelligence technology running on Intel-powered 1RU Dell servers with Mellanox 100GE NICs. The test delivered scale-up performance to 180Gbps in a single system and scale-out to 1.8Tbps across a 10RU cluster of systems. It shows how virtualization can now efficiently deliver scalable performance for operators of any size and will be featured at Mobile World Congress next week.

Network operators around the world are investing in Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) to reduce cost and increase the flexibility of their infrastructures. The move from purpose-built or proprietary hardware to full Commercial Off the Shelf still faces significant scaling challenges to service the multi-Tbps networks deployed today. This is particularly true given the bandwidth challenges ahead as a result of 5G mobile networks, rapidly escalating traffic from consumer broadband connections, and new Internet of Things (IoT) deployments. With this in mind, Procera’s latest test offers a blueprint for the next generation of virtualized network deployments.

The full test report and whitepaper describing the test cases can be downloaded at https://www.proceranetworks.com/deploying-multi-tpbs-virtualization. The report details the scale-up and scale-out test cases covered by the test. The scale-up test uses a single Dell R630 platform with dual Intel Xeon E5-2697 v4 2.3Ghz CPUs and two Mellanox ConnectX-4 Dual port 100GE QSFP+ NICs. In the scale-up test, each CPU devotes a single core to the hypervisor and 17 cores to PacketLogic/V, with 180Gbps performance achieved on the 1RU platform. The scale-out test case stacks 10 of the same system configuration to achieve 1.8Tbps of performance – which is the maximum achievable throughput with overhead across the systems.

However, the raw system performance numbers are just part of meeting the overall scalability challenges for service providers when virtualizing their packet core. The test report also details some of the architecture challenges that are solved by PacketLogic/V that enable higher performance and ease of scale-up and scale-out, namely CPU and I/O efficiency and creating symmetry in asymmetric networks without the use of an unnecessary load balancing overlay.

Procera’s PacketLogic DPI technology is the vehicle for operators to pull intelligence from the network for delivering an enhanced subscriber experience. PacketLogic/V enables flexible deployments of Procera PacketLogic capabilities using industry standard off-the-shelf hardware and software-based virtual machine environments.

“Adding support for 100GE for virtualized platforms has become a driving factor for a number of Procera’s customer use cases,” said Alexander Havang, CTO at Procera Networks. “In addition to a big reduction in hardware costs to deploy 100GE, this support enables new scale-up and scale-out deployment models that solve some of the stickiest operational issues operators are currently facing, including asymmetry and performance efficiency.”

“Procera’s PacketLogic software, combined with the Mellanox ConnectX-4 100GE adapter enables higher bandwidth, better VM density, and greatly improved CPU utilization. This in turn leads to significant cost benefits for virtualized deployments,” said Kevin Deierling, VP of Marketing at Mellanox. “Procera’s test results demonstrate the ability of COTS solutions to exceed the expectations of service providers for virtualized scalability and performance.”