Lightweight Implementation of Per-packet Service Protection in eBPF/XDP

TL;DR

This paper presents a lightweight eBPF/XDP implementation of per-packet service protection for deterministic communication, comparing it with a userspace approach through experimental analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a novel eBPF/XDP implementation of FRER, enabling efficient, in-kernel packet protection for deterministic networks, and compares it with a traditional userspace method.

Findings

eBPF/XDP implementation achieves low latency and high efficiency.

The in-kernel approach outperforms userspace in speed and resource usage.

Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the lightweight eBPF/XDP method.

Abstract

Deterministic communication means reliable packet forwarding with close to zero packet loss and bounded latency. Packet loss or delay above a threshold caused by, e.g., equipment failure or malfunction could be catastrophic for applications that require deterministic communication. To meet loss related targets, per-packet service protection has been introduced by deterministic communications standards; it is provided by Frame Replication and Elimination for Reliability (FRER) for Layer 2 Ethernet networks and by Packet Replication, Elimination, and Ordering Functions (PREOF) for Layer 3 IP/MPLS networks. We have implemented FRER with two conceptually different methods: (1) in eBPF/XDP as a lightweight software implementation; and (2) in userspace. We evaluate our XDP FRER via an experimental analysis and compare the two FRER implementations.