Master Thesis - Performance and virtualization

Netnod is a small high-tech firm based in Sweden which provides services at the core of the Internet, such as Internet-exchange

services, transmission, DNS-services, and time and frequency services. Netnod is at the forefront of secure and robust services.

At Netnod we mainly design security through diversity, that is by composing systems through many different nodes in many different

levels so that there is no single point of failure. In terms of security our systems focus on providing availability and

integrity, even in extreme scenarios.

However, sometimes we have to make hard decisions with regards to performance vs easy-of-use (such as virtualization and

orchestration) in terms of technical implementation. In practical terms, what is the real world difference between running a

network heavy application, such as NTS time servers, in a non-virtualized environment versus running it on an orchestrated

kubernetes cluster?

NTS is a time distribution protocol involving both computational overhead (for TLS) and network throughput (for answering

queries).

This thesis concerns digging into this issue, and if possible, suggest solutions. This thesis concerns both implementation and

evaluation of implementations.

This thesis project is aimed at students in computer science and engineering with an interest in networks, virtualization and

systems optimization.

The students are expected to be partly present at the Netnod main office in Solna, Stockholm. The planned semester is spring of

2026.