SDN-Enabled EVPN-VXLAN With P4 Accelerated User Plane

Ethernet Virtual Private Network (EVPN), together with Virtual Extensible Local Area Network (VXLAN), allows us to interconnect multiple Ethernet segments across the Internet to form a single, private Ethernet network. This paper adopts software-defined networking (SDN) technology to implement an EVPN-VXLAN architecture. Prior works either targeted data center networks (instead of geo-distributed sites) or used low-throughput virtualized switches. By contrast, the proposed approach targets geo-dispersed sites and uses P4 switches to accelerate data-plane performance. The approach integrates SDN host detection and EVPN host learning mechanisms for efficient host tracking and ARP suppression. It also supports Multi-Tenancy and Distributed Anycast Gateway (DAG). Experimental results demonstrate enhanced User Plane efficiency and reduced host communication latency.