1. Overview

Thank you for choosing 6WIND Host Network Accelerator.

6WIND Host Accelerators optimize virtual and cloud-native function (VNF/CNF) performance, ensuring enhanced efficiency and scalability in network environments. The 6WIND Host Accelerator product suite comprises of Host Network Accelerator (HNA) and Virtual Accelerator (VA), delivering: - High Performance - Low latency - Improved resources sharing - Higher efficiency

The 6WIND Virtual Host Network Accelerator (vHNA) is designed to facilitate the cloud-native transformation of service providers’ networks. It provides routing capabilities at the host level of Kubernetes nodes, enhancing network security through finer-grained access controls and network segment isolation.

This document will help you get started with your new product. It provides an overview as well as detailed installation and startup instructions.

1.1. Features

Host Network Accelerator offers:

  • Complete integration into Kubernetes workflow

  • Enhanced routing capabilities

  • IP/MPLS/SR support

  • VLAN/VxLAN support

  • High Performance

1.1.1. Routing

  • BGP, BGP4+

  • OSPFv2, OSPFv3

  • RIP, RIPng

  • IS-IS

  • SR-TE

  • PCEP

  • SRv6

  • PIM SM and SSM

  • cross-VRF

  • Static Routes

  • Path monitoring

  • ECMP

  • PBR

  • BFD

  • MPLS LDP

  • BGP L3VPN

  • VXLAN EVPN

  • Point to Multipoint GRE interfaces

  • NHRP

  • DMVPN with IPsec

  • Weighted ECMP support (Unequal Cost Multipath)

  • BGP EVPN filtering

  • BGP EVPN RT5

1.1.2. Layer 2 and Encapsulations

  • GRE

  • VLAN (802.1Q, QinQ)

  • VXLAN

  • LAG (802.3ad, LACP)

  • Ethernet Bridge

1.1.3. IP Networking

  • IPv4 and IPv6

  • IPv6 Autoconfiguration

  • VRF

  • IPv4 and IPv6 Tunneling

  • NAT

  • ECMP inner VXLAN hash support

1.1.4. QoS

  • Rate limiting per interface, per VRF

  • Class-based QoS

    • Classification: ToS / IP / DSCP / CoS

    • Shaping and Policing

    • Scheduling: PQ, PB-DWRR, HTB

    • Fair Queuing: SFQ

  • Ingress hardware-assisted based on DSCP

1.1.5. IP Services

  • DHCP v4 client

  • DHCP v4 server

  • DHCP v4 relay

  • DHCP v6 client

  • DNS client

  • DNS proxy

  • NTP

1.1.6. Management/Monitoring

  • SSHv2

  • CLI

  • NETCONF / YANG API

  • SNMP

  • KPIs / Telemetry (YANG-based)

  • Data streaming: InfluxDB, Elastic Search, Kafka, Amazon CloudWatch, Graphite

  • Role-Based Access Control with AAA (TACACS, Radius)

  • Syslog

  • 802.1ab LLDP

  • sFlow

  • Netflow / IPFIX

  • BMP

  • Netconf alarms based on Yang push

  • Audit Trail

  • Custom user roles with TACACS

  • Custom user roles with Radius

  • CBOR format for Yang Push (RFC 8949)

  • Netconf / SNMP alert capability using thresholds

1.1.7. Operations

  • Licensing: online licensing system with flexible feature and capacity enablement

1.1.8. Power consumption

  • Eco mode leveraging cpu frequency scaling according to workload

1.2. System Requirements

  • A container engine (Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, …)

    • Virtio vNIC, PCI passthrough and SR-IOV

  • Supported processors

    • Intel Xeon Platinum/Gold/Silver family Ice Lake*

    • Intel Xeon Platinum/Gold/Silver family Sapphire Rapids*

    • Intel Xeon Platinum/Gold/Silver family Emerald Rapids

    • AMD Epyc 4 Genoa and Siena*

  • Supported Ethernet NICs

    • Intel 10G 82599*, X520*, X540, X550* (ixgbe)

    • Intel 10G/40G X710*, XL710*, X722, XXV710* (i40e)

    • Intel 25G*/100G* E810 (ice)

    • Mellanox 10G*/25G*/40G*/50G/100G* ConnectX- 4/5/6 (mlx5)

    • Mellanox 200G ConnectX-7 (mlx5)

Note: marked references (*) on processors and NICs are fully integrated in 6WIND’s CI with a wide functional and performance test coverage.

  • Memory footprint

    • To run Host Network Accelerator, we recommend at least 6GB of hugepages, 2GB of standard memory, and 512MB of POSIX shared memory. The minimum requirements are 1GB of hugepages, 1GB of standard memory, and 64MB of POSIX shared memory.

    Host Network Accelerator requires 8G of RAM to achieve the following capabilities:

    VRs

    32

    Routes

    1000000

    Next-hops

    200000

    Neighbors

    10300

    PBR rules

    4096

    VXLAN interfaces

    512

    See also

    Fast path limits configuration to tune these capabilities.

  • CPU: Host Network Accelerator requires at least 2 CPU cores.