NFV: Virtual Router based on DPDK

Engagement Router VM Traffic VM

Calsoft is working on virtual router project to provide routing capabilities in
virtualised environment. User Space

Forwarding Router
Solution Quagga
Configuration
RIPD
ACLs BGPD Over SSH
The forwarding path is optimized with DPDK.
OSPFD
• Routing services like OSPF , BGP etc. Are provided with the help of Quagga. DPDK Zebra
• Virtual Router has support of L3/L4 ACLs which can be configured with the I-Perf / DPDK –
help of CLI Packet
• Switching many packets using the LPM algorithm Generation
• Making this switching scalable with the possibility of adding more packet Kernel
queues/CPUs Kernel Space

Calsoft’s contribution VM
• Cloud image based on Ubuntu 14.04 with Virtual Router DPDK based
application and Quagga. ESX Virtual Switch
• Ubuntu OS image is fully optimized to achieve highest throughput
performance.
• Used DPDK optimized iperf tool for performance testing. Benefits

• The packets are generated using DPDK-PktGen which is

configured for sending 64 Bytes UDP packets with a
Technology random source and destination IP. When Configured with 4
OS – Linux RX queues, Virtual Router is able to forward packets with 3
times more throughput compared to the forwarding in
Language – C, DPDK
Linux Kernel.
Tools – Quagga

©2018 Calsoft. All Rights Reserved. 1

 NFV: DPDK apps for Performance
Engagement
Calsoft is working on comparison of performance with/without DPDK of standard
networking applications.

Solution

• DPDK, SR-IOV are integrated technologies which are used to boot the packet
processing performance.
• Technologies like DPDK, netmap, SR-IOV are building blocks for NFV where every
network function is run on a virtual machine of cloud or a data center instead of
dedicated appliances.

Calsoft’s contribution
• Understanding the HW level and SW level enhancements made to DPDK.
• This consists of PMD, Hugh page map, dedicated libraries like timer, thread,
LPM.
• Worked on DPDK enabled networking applications such as OVS, load-balancer,
QoS scheduler and porting of custom applications like iperf.

Technology
OS – Linux
Language – C, Python
Tools – Wireshark

©2018 Calsoft. All Rights Reserved. 2

 smartNIC programming in OVS-DPDK environment
Engagement

Calsoft is engaged with to verify a virtual router functionality by programming the

lookups inside the smartNICs. The solution is being tested in openstack
environment.

Solution

• Setup a server with OVS running on it. OVS code is compiled from source and
brought on a server with 2 VMs connected to the server.
• Identified HW offload specific OVS code and add smartNIC programming APIs.
• Used OVS dpif_interface for initialization and offload functions
• Recompiled OVS binaries and verified communication with smartNIC over PCIe
interface
• Tested vRouter functionality by programming the RIB lookups in the smartNIC
• Compared the performance of the solutions a. OVS-DPDK b. OVS-DPDK with
smartNIC used for forwarding function
• Demoed the solution to telecommunication service provider.

Benefits Technology
• Completed the PoC related to programming the smartNIC DPDK, OVS, smartNIC programming, iperf, vRouter, PCIe
• Performance improvements with HW based flow lookups. inteface

©2019 Calsoft. All Rights Reserved. 3