scope:

The present document specifies vendor-agnostic definitions of performance metrics and the associated methods of measurement for Benchmarking networks supported in the NFVI. The Benchmarks and Methods will take into account the communication-affecting aspects of the compute/networking/virtualisation environment (such as the transient interrupts that block other processes or the ability to dedicate variable amounts of resources to communication processes). These Benchmarks are intended to serve as a basis for fair comparison of different implementations of NFVI, (composed of various hardware and software components) according to each individual Benchmark and networking configuration evaluated. Note that a Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM) may play a supporting role in configuring the network under test. Examples of existing Benchmarks include IETF RFC 2544 Throughput and Latency (developed for physical network functions).