Comparison of the Performance and Energy Efficiency Evaluation of 5G User-Plane Functions

While 5G has arrived with ambitious promises regarding the disruptive performance of the new applications it enables, its power consumption is raising several concerns especially for the user-plane, as such applications generate huge amounts of data. In order to better understand the issue, this paper compares two different type of User-Plane Functions (UPF), namely the Vector Packet Processing (VPP) and the Extended Berkeley Packet Filter - eXpress Data Path (eBPF-XDP). Results show better performances of the latter in certain conditions.