Mind the Gap - A Comparison of Software Packet Generators

Paul Emmerich, Sebastian Gallenmuller, Gianni Antichi, Andrew W. Moore, Georg Carle

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

32 Scopus citations

Abstract

Network research relies on packet generators to assess performance and correctness of new ideas. Software-based generators in particular are widely used by academic researchers because of their flexibility, affordability, and open-source nature. The rise of new frameworks for fast IO on commodity hardware is making them even more attractive. Longstanding performance differences of software generation versus hardware in terms of throughput are no longer as big of a concern as they used to be few years ago. This paper investigates the properties of several high-per-formance software packet generators and the implications on their precision when a given traffic pattern needs to be generated. We believe that the evaluation strategy presented in this paper helps understanding the actual limitations in high-performance software packet generation, thus helping the research community to build better tools.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2017 ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems, ANCS 2017
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages191-203
Number of pages13
ISBN (Electronic)9781509063864
DOIs
StatePublished - 30 Jun 2017
Externally publishedYes
Event13th ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems, ANCS 2017 - Beijing, China
Duration: 18 May 201719 May 2017

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2017 ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems, ANCS 2017

Conference

Conference13th ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems, ANCS 2017
Country/TerritoryChina
CityBeijing
Period18/05/1719/05/17

Keywords

  • Benchmarking
  • NetFPGA
  • Packet Processing Frameworks

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