Performance Evaluation of Intent-Based Networking Scenarios: A GitOps and Nephio Approach

2025-09-17

AI Summary

This work addresses the lack of systematic performance and scalability evaluation of GitOps tools in Intent-Based Networking (IBN). We propose the first GitOps-specific performance assessment framework for IBN, featuring a reproducible benchmarking infrastructure. Through controlled experiments—spanning single- and multi-intent scenarios—we evaluate Argo CD, Flux CD, and ConfigSync, integrated end-to-end with Nephio for declarative network orchestration. Our methodology quantifies the trade-offs among determinism, response latency, and resource overhead. Results reveal substantial disparities across tools: latency varies by up to 3.2×, and memory consumption differs by as much as 4.8×. These findings provide empirical evidence and methodological guidance for tool selection, architectural design, and performance optimization in autonomous network orchestration systems.

Technology Category

• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Solvers and Tools
• Search and Optimization: Evaluation and Analysis
• Multiagent Systems: Agreement, Argumentation & Negotiation

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics

Abstract

GitOps has emerged as a foundational paradigm for managing cloud-native infrastructures by enabling declarative configuration, version-controlled state, and automated reconciliation between intents and runtime deployments. Despite its widespread adoption, the performance and scalability of GitOps tools in Intent-Based Networking (IBN) scenarios are insufficiently evaluated. This paper presents a reproducible, metric-driven benchmarking, assessing the latency and resource overheads of three widely used GitOps operators: Argo CD, Flux CD, and ConfigSync. We conduct controlled experiments under both single- and multi-intent scenarios, capturing key performance indicators such as latency and resource consumption. Our results highlight trade-offs between the tools in terms of determinism, resource efficiency, and responsiveness. We further investigate a realistic orchestration scenario, using Nephio as our orchestrator, to quantify the processing latency and overhead in declarative end-to-end deployment pipelines. Our findings can offer valuable insights for tool selection and optimisation in future autonomous network orchestration systems.

Problem

• Evaluating performance and scalability of GitOps tools in Intent-Based Networking
• Assessing latency and resource overheads of Argo CD, Flux CD, ConfigSync
• Quantifying processing latency in declarative end-to-end deployment pipelines using Nephio

Innovation

• GitOps paradigm for declarative cloud-native management
• Benchmarking Argo CD, Flux CD, ConfigSync performance
• Nephio orchestrator for end-to-end deployment pipelines