TY - RPRT T1 - Hosting virtual networks on commodity hardware Y1 - 2008 A1 - Bhatia,S. A1 - Motiwala,M. A1 - Muhlbauer,W. A1 - Valancius,V. A1 - Bavier,A. A1 - Feamster, Nick A1 - Peterson,L. A1 - Rexford,J. AB - This paper describes Trellis, a software platform for hostingmultiple virtual networks on shared commodity hardware. Trellis allows each virtual network to define its own topol- ogy, control protocols, and forwarding tables, which low- ers the barrier for deploying custom services on an isolated, reconfigurable, and programmable network, while amor- tizing costs by sharing the physical infrastructure. Trellis synthesizes two container-based virtualization technologies, VServer and NetNS, as well as a new tunneling mechanism, EGRE, into a coherent platform that enables high-speed vir- tual networks. We describe the design and implementation, of Trellis, including kernel-level performance optimizations, and evaluate its supported packet-forwarding rates against other virtualization technologies. We are in the process of upgrading the VINI facility to use Trellis. We also plan to release Trellis as part of MyVINI, a standalone software dis- tribution that allows researchers and application developers to deploy their own virtual network hosting platforms. PB - Georgia Institute of Technology VL - GT-CS-07-10 ER -