%0 Report %D 2008 %T Hosting virtual networks on commodity hardware %A Bhatia,S. %A Motiwala,M. %A Muhlbauer,W. %A Valancius,V. %A Bavier,A. %A Feamster, Nick %A Peterson,L. %A Rexford,J. %X 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. %I Georgia Institute of Technology %V GT-CS-07-10 %8 2008/// %G eng