NIEP: NFV Infrastructure Emulation Platform Thales Nicolai Tavares ∗ , Leonardo da Cruz Marcuzzo ∗ , Vin´ ıcius Fulber Garcia ∗ , Giovanni Venˆ ancio de Souza ‡ , Muriel Figueredo Franco † , Lucas Bondan †§ , Filip De Turck § , Lisandro Zambenedetti Granville † , Elias Proc´ opio Duarte Junior ‡ , Carlos Raniery Paula dos Santos ∗ , Alberto Egon Schaeffer-Filho † ∗ Federal University of Santa Maria {tntavares,lmarcuzzo,vfulber,csantos}@inf.ufsm.br † Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul {lbondan,mffranco,alberto,granville}@inf.ufrgs.br ‡ Federal University of Paran´ a {gvsouza,elias}@inf.ufpr.br § INTEC – Ghent University {filip.deturck}@ugent.be Abstract—Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) presents several advantages over traditional network architectures, such as flexibility, security, and reduced CAPEX/OPEX. However, virtualizing network functions usually executed on specialized hardware (e.g., firewall, DPI, load balancer) and employing inno- vative technologies (e.g., OpenFlow, P4) increases the challenges of designing, testing, and deploying network infrastructures and services. Although platforms for prototyping NFV environments have emerged in recent years, they still present limitations that hinder the evaluation of specific NFV scenarios, such as fog computing and heterogeneous networks. In this paper, we present NIEP: a platform for designing and testing NFV-based infras- tructures and Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) through the integration of a well-known network emulator (Mininet) and a novel platform for Click-based VNFs development (Click-on- OSv). NIEP provides a complete NFV emulation environment, allowing network operators to test their solutions in a controlled scenario prior to deployment in production networks. As main advantages, NIEP allows the emulation of heterogeneous scenar- ios, which can be easily migrated to production environments. An experimental scenario is defined to analyze NIEP’s performance in terms of VNFs boot time and throughput. Further, NIEP’s advantages and shortcomings are discussed and compared to existing emulation platforms. Index Terms—NFV, SDN, infrastructure emulation, VNF de- sign I. I NTRODUCTION Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is driving a paradigm shift in telecommunications by avoiding ossification and introducing innovation in the network core [1]. NFV transforms the way in which operators design and manage networks by employing virtualization technology to consoli- date specialized network equipment onto commodity servers. By moving the processing of packets from dedicated mid- dleboxes to Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) running on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) servers, NFV enhances flexibility and scalability to create innovative services while reducing CApital and OPerational EXpenditure (CAPEX and OPEX) [2]. Both academia and industry have been carrying out efforts to evolve and promote NFV. These efforts include, for exam- ple, the development of novel NFV architectures, systems, and applications [3]. One of the main challenges for developers and researchers in NFV is the evaluation of, for example, the performance and behavior of VNFs prior to their actual deployment in production networks. Difficulties to perform tests include infrastructure limitations and unavailability of actual NFV environments. As such, solutions to emulate NFV scenarios are important to help in the process of designing, testing, and evaluating VNFs. The use of emulation to evaluate applications before de- ployment has been widely applied in computer networks in the past [4] [5]. In the same way, by introducing emulation environments with support for both NFV infrastructures and the Management and Orchestration (MANO) framework, de- velopers and researchers are better instrumented to improve their VNFs, while not running the risk of compromising the production environment. However, despite the inherent benefits, solutions for NFV emulation are scarce, limited (e.g., due to low portability or lack of support for heterogeneous environments), not intuitive, and involve a steep learning curve before they can be fully adopted. In this paper, we present NFV Infrastructure Emulation Platform (NIEP) 1 , a novel platform based on Click-on-OSv [6] and Mininet [7] that emulates diverse NFV scenarios and allows the evaluation of VNFs. NIEP allows operators to rapidly create heterogeneous NFV emulated scenarios. All created scenarios are portable because of the full virtualization strategy adopted by NIEP. We also show the feasibility of NIEP in a case study considering a Fog computing and Virtual Customer Premises Equipment (vCPE) scenario. We expect that NIEP will assist network operators in the offline analysis of the functionality and performance of VNF deployments. Pre-tested configurations can be evaluated and optimal config- urations may be established before actual VNFs are deployed in the network infrastructure. The remaining of this paper is organized as follows. In Sec- tion II, background and related work are reviewed. In Section III, we introduce NIEP and detail each of its components. 1 Available at http://ufsm.br/gt-fende 173 2018 IEEE 32nd International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications 1550-445X/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE DOI 10.1109/AINA.2018.00037