Comparison of frameworks for high-performance packet IO

Abstract

Network stacks currently implemented in operating systems can no longer cope with the packet rates offered by 10 Gbit Ethernet. Thus, frameworks were developed claiming to offer a faster alternative for this demand. These frameworks enable arbitrary packet processing systems to be built from commodity hardware handling a traffic rate of several 10 Gbit interfaces, entering a domain previously only available to custom-built hardware. In this paper, we survey various frameworks for high-performance packet IO. We analyze the performance of the most prominent frameworks based on representative measurements in packet forwarding scenarios. Therefore, we quantify the effects of caching and look at the tradeoff between throughput and latency. Moreover, we introduce a model to estimate and assess the performance of these packet processing frameworks.