Extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) is an instruction set and an execution environment inside the Linux kernel. eBPF improves flexibility for data processing and is realized via a virtual machine featuring both a Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler and an interpreter running in the kernel. It executes custom eBPF programs supplied by the user, effectively moving kernel functionality into user space. eBPF has received widespread adoption by companies such as Facebook, Netflix, and academia for a wide range of application domains. eBPF can be used to program the eXpress DataPath (XDP), a kernel network layer that processes packets closer to the NetworkInterface Card (NIC) for fast packet processing.

In this thesis, eBPF with XDP, and Iptables, are considered as a Network function(NF), implemented in a Virtual Machine (VM) for packet filtering. The traffic source(source VM) and traffic sink (destination VM) are present in the same subnet. The aim of this thesis is, to understand and investigate the implementation of NFs inVMs and to analyze performance metrics.

In VirtualBox, VMs are created to implement the NFs. The results are obtained for the measurements that are essential for the performance evaluation of the NFs, and presented in graphs.