2026· IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management· Vol 23, pp. 6639-6658· 0 citations· 58 references
Computer Science
Abstract
Network emulation has become an indispensable methodology for evaluating next-generation network architectures, offering a critical balance between experimental fidelity and operational scalability. However, its effectiveness is fundamentally constrained by inefficiencies in emulating large-scale networks, particularly during virtual network construction. This bottleneck arises from mandatory serialization of virtual link instantiation and operating system (OS) kernel-level notification overheads, which collectively degrade performance by orders of magnitude on 10K-node topologies. Departure from the current practice that employs a multi-machine framework for improvements, we propose SplitNN (Split Network and Namespace), a novel single-machine network emulation paradigm that breaks the serialization constraint through multi-VM (virtual machines) partitioning, and reduces notification overheads via namespace segmentation. Extensive evaluations show that SplitNN constructs 10K-node virtual networks within 1–5 minutes on a single machine, achieving a 98.5%–99.2% reduction in construction time compared to state-of-the-art emulators. While primarily a single-machine solution, SplitNN seamlessly integrates with multi-machine deployments, complementing them by enabling cumulative gains in both scalability and efficiency.
Google's Global Network (GGN), a major architectural redesign of the WAN that evolves B2 and B4 into a single, modular, and highly available software-defined network, is presented.
Mohammad Al-Fares, R. Alimi, Arda Balkanay et al.· Conference on Applications,...· 0 citations
Spillway introduces a DPU-host hybrid data plane that repurposes idle host CPU resources to process spillover traffic when the DPU becomes the bottleneck, and decouples virtual switching capacity from static DPU hardware limits.
Xiaochong Jiang, Dian Fan, Yilong Lv et al.· Conference on Applications,...· 0 citations
Network slicing is a key enabling technology for fifth-generation (5G) and beyond mobile networks, which enables operators to run multiple logical networks on top of common physical infrastructure while meeting heterogeneous quality-ofservice (QoS) requirements. In this paper, we summarize the design, implementation, and evaluation of a UDP-based virtual network slicing simulator modeling four slices in accordance with 3GPP service types: enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC), Massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTC), and a dedicated Best Effort slice. The simulator uses real UDP sockets on localhost in a multi-threaded framework and implements separate admission control per slice, supporting three configurable resourceborrowing modes—none, full, and controlled—in which the primary slices (eMBB, URLLC, mMTC) may borrow unused capacity from the Best Effort slice when their own allocation runs out. QoS metrics including throughput, packet loss ratio, one-way delay, and jitter are collected in a thread-safe manner per slice. Experimental results under controlled borrowing (60 s, 16 nodes, 3 MB per slice, 40% borrow cap) demonstrate activation of the borrowing mechanism with nonzero borrowed-in and borrowedout values, and illustrate the trade-off between primary-slice throughput and Best Effort protection.
Sroor Habeeb Mahmood, Ali Al-Allawee· IEEE Jordan Conference on Ap...· 0 citations
In-network congestion control algorithms (CCAs) are essential for emerging datacenter applications to achieve high throughput and low tail latency. Deploying these CCAs in production requires preserving the existing, highly optimized network datapath as much as possible, since rebuilding or modifying the datapath demands substantial engineering effort to regain performance. Although eBPF enables flexible kernel programmability, deploying in-network CCAs through it remains challenging due to semantic misalignment across kernel hooks, compatibility issues with existing mechanisms, and instability across kernel versions. We present eCCA, an eBPF-based framework that enables the deployment of in-network CCAs in the standard Linux kernel without intrusive code modifications. To address the above challenges, eCCA introduces unified context management, functionally correct hook orchestration, and deployment-adaptive abstractions, which are derived from our practical deployment experiences. We demonstrate the practicality of eCCA by deploying CAQM across multiple NIC models and Linux kernel versions with minimal requirements. Evaluations show that CAQM on eCCA preserves native CAQM’s control behavior with less than 3% throughput loss, while reducing tail latency by 96% compared to CUBIC at the same throughput.
Xinshu Wang, Bin Yang, Jian Cheng et al.· Asia-Pacific Workshop on Net...· 0 citations
By embedding container addresses in the 128-bit IPv6 space, NetPila integrates the container network with the physical network, reducing packet-processing complexity and improving scalability.
Jiaqi Gao, Chao Qin, Sheng Cheng et al.· Conference on Applications,...· 0 citations
In practice, network experiments are difficult to share and repeat due to undeclared dependencies, environment drift, and fragile imperative scripts. These problems cause experiments to silently diverge across machines and time, making results hard to verify and build upon. In this paper, we present NixNet, a framework that automates the complete experiment lifecycle—from dependency installation to resource cleanup. NixNet leverages the Nix package manager to enable reproducibility and preservation of network experiments through a virtual testbed. Testbeds are defined by a single declarative expression specifying network nodes, virtual links, link characteristics, and application scripts. By enforcing strict isolation using Linux namespaces, NixNet eliminates unintended side-effects and ensures reproducibility by pinning the entire dependency closure, including userspace binaries and input data. NixNet configures the Linux networking stack directly via syscalls, providing a lightweight yet strongly isolated testbed. We demonstrate NixNet's utility through scenarios in protocol research—including Media over QUIC streaming and LEO satellite link emulation—and provide a detailed comparison against Mininet and containerlab, showing superior scalability and isolation properties.
Benedikt Spies, Marcin Bosk, Paulo Mendes et al.· Applied Networking Research...· 0 citations
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