Prototyping a Network Provider for Kubernetes through Disaggregated eBPF Services

Containerisation and microservices architecture are getting momentum in nowadays ICT field. Microservices have a demand on a high number of containers which requires orchestration and interconnection. Kubernetes, an open-source container orchestration platform, has been widely adopted by cloud service providers (CSPs) for its advantages in simplifying container deployment, scalability and scheduling. Networking is one of the central components of Kubernetes, providing connectivity between different pods (group of containers) both within the same host and across hosts. Today's network infrastructure is increasingly implemented using NFV (Network Function Virtualization) technology where network services are implemented in pure software. This brings several advantages such as flexibility and cost reduction as these functions can be performed on general purpose hardware. In this context, eBPF (Extended Berkeley Packet Filter) is an excellent technology, suitable for creating network functions for fast packet processing in the Linux kernel. This thesis aims at defining and validating a modular network plugin for Kubernetes that leverages a set of disaggregated network services. This would be achieved using Polycube, an open source software framework for Linux developed at Politecnico di Torino, which is used for the creation of extremely fast network services programs and interconnect them. The modular feature of this project allows you to insert new network functions to get more features such as security, network policies and observability.