Software routers are flexible low-cost platforms for implementation of network functionalities on general-purpose CPUs and NICs. General-purpose hardware is constantly improving, and, currently, it deploys high frequency CPUs and NICs that can support multiple 10/40/100 Gbps network interfaces. General-purpose hardware allows implementation of flexible network functions that can be modified on demand. However, it has lower throughput than the specialized hardware, which gets particularly limited for short packets. On the other side, traffic loads with short packets to be switched are increasing, and, they include gaming applications, social networking and other demanding loads. Specialized packet I/O frameworks provide custom network drivers and bypass kernel network stack, allowing direct packet exchange between applications and NICs with high throughputs for all packet sizes. We developed complete software routers with high performance data planes that are based on netmap and DPDK frameworks. We evaluated and compared implemented software routers on advanced server with potential switching capacity of 200 Gbps.

软件路由器是灵活的低成本平台，用于在通用CPU和NIC上实现网络功能。通用硬件在不断改进，目前，它部署了可支持多个10/40/100 Gbps网络接口的高频CPU和NIC。通用硬件允许实现可按需修改的灵活网络功能。但是，它的吞吐量比专用硬件要低，专用硬件在短数据包方面受到特别限制。另一方面，带有要交换的短分组的流量负载正在增加，其中包括游戏应用程序，社交网络和其他苛刻的负载。专门的数据包I / O框架提供自定义网络驱动程序，并绕过内核网络堆栈，允许在所有大小的数据包之间以高吞吐量在应用程序和NIC之间直接交换数据包。我们基于netmap和DPDK框架开发了具有高性能数据平面的完整软件路由器。我们评估并比较了潜在服务器容量为200 Gbps的高级服务器上已实现的软件路由器。