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Forwarding

Hardware detail

This lab tests a Netgate RCC-VE 4860 (dmesg):

  • Quad-core Intel Atom C2558 (2.40 GHz)
  • 2x Gigabit Intel i211
  • 4x Gigabit Intel i350
  • 8 GB of RAM

Lab set-up

For more information about full setup of this lab: Setting up a forwarding performance benchmark lab (switch configuration, etc.).

Diagram

 +------------------------------------------+    +-----------------------+
 |            Device under Test             |    |     Packet gen        |
 |                  igb2:   198.18.0.209/24 |<===| igb2: 198.18.0.203    |
 |                           2001:2::209/64 |    |     2001:2::203/64    |
 |                     (00:08:a2:09:33:da)  |    | (00:1b:21:c4:95:7a)   |
 |                                          |    |                       |
 |                  igb3:   198.19.0.209/24 |    | igb3: 198.19.0.203    |
 |                    2001:2:0:8000::209/64 |    | 2001:2:0:8000::203/64 |
 |                     (00:08:a2:09:33:db)  |===>| (00:1b:21:c4:95:7b)   |
 |                                          |    |                       |
 |               static routes              |    |                       |
 |      198.19.0.0/16 => 198.19.0.203       |    +-----------------------+
 |      198.18.0.0/16 => 198.18.0.203       |
 | 2001:2::/49        => 2001:2::203        |
 | 2001:2:0:8000::/49 => 2001:2:0:8000::203 |
 |                                          |
 |            static arp and ndp            |
 | 198.18.0.203        => 00:1b:21:c4:95:7a |
 | 2001:2::203                              |
 |                                          |
 | 198.19.0.203        => 00:1b:21:c4:95:7b |
 | 2001:2:0:8000::203                       |
 |                                          |
 |                                          |
 +------------------------------------------+

This device uses two kinds of Intel NIC:

  • igb0 and igb1: Intel i211 with 2 queues, intended for admin purposes
  • igb2 to igb5: Intel i350 with 4 queues (and iPXE support), intended for forwarding/firewalling

The generator MUST generate lots of IP flows (multiple source/destination IP addresses and/or UDP src/dst ports) with the minimum packet size (to produce the maximum packet rate) with one of these commands:

Multiple source/destination IP addresses (don't forget to specify the UDP port to avoid using port 0, which is filtered by pf):

pkt-gen -i igb2 -f tx -n 80000000 -l 60 -d 198.19.10.1:2000-198.19.10.20 -D 00:08:a2:09:33:da -s 198.18.10.1:2000-198.18.10.100 -S 00:1b:21:c4:95:7a -w 4 -U

And the same with IPv6 flows (minimum frame size of 62 for a valid empty UDP packet):

pkt-gen -f tx -i igb2 -n 1000000000 -l 62 -6 -d "[2001:2:0:8001::1]-[2001:2:0:8001::64]" -D 00:08:a2:09:33:da -s "[2001:2:0:1::1]-[2001:2:0:1::14]" -S 00:1b:21:c4:95:7a -w 4 -U

The receiver will use this command:

pkt-gen -i igb3 -f rx -w 4

Configuration and tuning

Configuration repository

Results