Extending Network Emulation Support in ns-3 using DPDK

Abstract

ns-3 network simulator provides support for network emulation by enabling simulated nodes to communicate with real hosts by using a network device called EmuFdNetDevice. Network emulation is an important feature in ns-3 and can be used to validate its models by comparing the emulation results to those obtained from real testbeds. Typically, ns-3 uses raw sockets of host's kernel stack to support network emulation. However, there is an active interest to enhance ns-3's network emulation features by using kernel bypass libraries. Recently, a new network device called NetmapNetDevice has been proposed for ns-3 to enable its interaction with netmap. In this paper, we extend network emulation support in ns-3 by using Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK). DPDK provides a set of fast packet processing libraries to bypass host network stack and obtain a direct access to Network Interface Card (NIC). We propose a new network device in ns-3 called DpdkNetDevice, intermediating between ns-3 Internet stack and DPDK environment to read/write packets from/to the NIC. We validate the working of DpdkNetDevice by performing various experiments and comparing results obtained from it to those obtained from EmuFdNetDevice and NetmapNetDevice. We observe that network emulations using DpdkNetDevice on a Gigabit Ethernet NIC provide higher throughput with significantly lesser CPU cycles per packet.