TCP/IP stack for DPDK

The hypercall driver in this repository attaches a rump kernel TCP/IP stack to a network interface card accessed via the Intel Data Plane Development Kit DPDK.

Status

The driver has been tested to work and is able to exchange TCP traffic with an Internet peer.

Future plans include benchmarking, performance optimization, and improved configurability.

A wiki page documents some ideas for potential performance optimizations.

Instructions

To use, in addition to a working DPDK installation you need the rump kernel TCP/IP stack components. The easiest way to obtain the rump kernel components is to use buildrump.sh. The procedure is follows.

• clone the buildrump.sh git repo and run ./buildrump.sh checkout there.
• in the src directory of this repo, edit the parameters at the top of rumpcomp_user.c, e.g. the interface port to be used.
• copy both files in src to buildrump.sh's src/sys/rump/net/lib/libvirtif (you should overwrite the files already there).
• run ./buildrump.sh

As a simple test you can use the trivial program in the examples directory of buildrump.sh. Add the necessary DPDK libraries to the Makefile before compiling: -lrte_eal -lrte_malloc -lrte_mbuf -lethdev -lrte_mempool -lrte_ring and additionally the library for the poll mode driver you are using (e.g. -lrte_pmd_wm). Compile and run the resulting binary.

For more information on how to use the resulting userspace TCP/IP stack, see e.g. the buildrump.sh repo or the page on rump kernels.