The Intel Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) is a set of user-space libraries and drivers that provides a programming framework for high-speed packet processing applications. The DPDK includes a number of Poll Mode Drivers that enable direct packet transfer between the physical NIC and user-space without using interrupts, bypassing the Linux kernel network stack entirely. In order to take advantage of DPDK, Linux huge pages must be enabled in the system. The allocation of huge pages should preferably be done at boot time by passing parameters on the kernel command line. Add the following to the kernel boot parameters: default_hugepagesz=1GB hugepagesz=1GB hugepages=8 hugepagesz=2M hugepages=2048 For DPDK documentation, see http://dpdk.org/doc/guides-17.02/index.html

In addition to DPDK, Enea NFV Access Platform includes Pktgen, a software traffic generator that is powered by the DPDK packet processing framework. Pktgen can act as a transmitter or receiver and is capable of generating 10Gbit wire rate traffic with 64 byte frames. Pktgen is installed in /usr/share/apps/pktgen/ and needs to be executed from this directory. For Pktgen documentation, see http://pktgen-dpdk.readthedocs.io

The following setup instructions apply to both host and guest. To make the hugepage memory available for DPDK, it must be mounted: mkdir /mnt/huge mount -t hugetlbfs nodev /mnt/huge Load the DPDK igb_uio kernel module: modprobe igb_uio Bind the device to the igb_uio driver: dpdk-devbind --bind=igb_uio <PCI device number>The DPDK provides the dpdk-devbind tool to help binding/unbinding devices from specific drivers. See http://dpdk.org/doc/guides-17.02/tools/devbind.html for more information. To print the current status of all known network interfaces:dpdk-devbind --status At this point the system is ready to run DPDK applications.

This is a simple DPDK test setup using two boards connected back-to-back. One board generates traffic using the Pktgen application, and the other board runs the DPDK testpmd example to forward packets back on the same interface. Pktgen [DPDK] - Board 1 PHY <--> Board 2 PHY - [DPDK] testpmd Setup DPDK on both boards, following the instructions in [FIXME]: On board 1, start the Pktgen application: cd /usr/share/apps/pktgen/./pktgen -c 0x7 -n 4 --socket-mem 1024 -- -P -m "[1:2].0" In the Pktgen console, run: start 0 The Pktgen output will display the traffic configuration and statistics. On board 2, start the testpmd application: testpmd -c 0x7 -n 4 -- --txd=512 --rxd=512 --port-topology=chained For more information, refer to the testpmd application user guide: http://dpdk.org/doc/guides-17.02/testpmd_app_ug/index.html.