Multicore NF Scalability, Application-Aware Steering, Lock Elimination
AppSteer introduces a Linux/eBPF-based framework that enables network functions to steer requests at application-key granularity (e.g., user ID) instead of only by TCP/UDP flow. This design supports lock-free, per-core partitioned state for compute-intensive NFs (e.g., 5G core NFs), delivering 15-18% more throughput at 16 cores compared to conventional approaches