5. Flow Performance Tool

Application for rte_flow performance testing. The application provide the ability to test insertion rate of specific rte_flow rule, by stressing it to the NIC, and calculate the insertion rate.

The application offers some options in the command line, to configure which rule to apply.

After that the application will start producing rules with same pattern but increasing the outer IP source address by 1 each time, thus it will give different flow each time, and all other items will have open masks.

6. Known Limitations

The current version has limitations which can be removed in future:

  • Support outer items up to tunnel layer only.
  • Single core insertion only.
  • Only one instance of same action can be added in one rule.

The application also provide the ability to measure rte flow deletion rate, in addition to memory consumption before and after the flows creation.

The app supports single and multi core performance measurements.

7. Compiling the Application

The test-flow-perf application is compiled as part of the main compilation of the DPDK libraries and tools.

Refer to the DPDK Getting Started Guides for details.

8. Running the Application

8.1. EAL Command-line Options

Please refer to EAL parameters (Linux) or EAL parameters (FreeBSD) for a list of available EAL command-line options.

8.2. Flow Performance Options

The following are the command-line options for the flow performance application. They must be separated from the EAL options, shown in the previous section, with a -- separator:

sudo ./dpdk-test-flow_perf -n 4 -w 08:00.0 -- --ingress --ether --ipv4 --queue --flows-count=1000000

The command line options are:

  • --help Display a help message and quit.
  • --flows-count=N Set the number of needed flows to insert, where 1 <= N <= “number of flows”. The default value is 4,000,000.
  • --dump-iterations Print rates for each iteration of flows. Default iteration is 1,00,000.
  • --deletion-rate Enable deletion rate calculations.
  • --dump-socket-mem Dump the memory stats for each socket before the insertion and after.
  • --enable-fwd Enable packets forwarding after insertion/deletion operations.

Attributes:

  • --ingress Set Ingress attribute to all flows attributes.
  • --egress Set Egress attribute to all flows attributes.
  • --transfer Set Transfer attribute to all flows attributes.
  • --group=N Set group for all flows, where N >= 0. Default group is 0.

Items:

  • --ether Add Ether item to all flows items, This item have open mask.

  • --vlan Add VLAN item to all flows items, This item have VLAN value defined in user_parameters.h under VNI_VALUE with full mask, default value = 1. Other fields are open mask.

  • --ipv4 Add IPv4 item to all flows items, This item have incremental source IP, with full mask. Other fields are open mask.

  • --ipv6 Add IPv6 item to all flows item, This item have incremental source IP, with full mask. Other fields are open mask.

  • --tcp Add TCP item to all flows items, This item have open mask.

  • --udp Add UDP item to all flows items, This item have open mask.

  • --vxlan Add VXLAN item to all flows items, This item have VNI value defined in user_parameters.h under VNI_VALUE with full mask, default value = 1. Other fields are open mask.

  • --vxlan-gpe Add VXLAN-GPE item to all flows items, This item have VNI value defined in user_parameters.h under VNI_VALUE with full mask, default value = 1. Other fields are open mask.

  • --gre Add GRE item to all flows items, This item have protocol value defined in user_parameters.h under GRE_PROTO with full mask, default protocol = 0x6558 “Ether” Other fields are open mask.

  • --geneve Add GENEVE item to all flows items, This item have VNI value defined in user_parameters.h under VNI_VALUE with full mask, default value = 1. Other fields are open mask.

  • --gtp Add GTP item to all flows items, This item have TEID value defined in user_parameters.h under TEID_VALUE with full mask, default value = 1. Other fields are open mask.

  • --meta Add Meta item to all flows items, This item have data value defined in user_parameters.h under META_DATA with full mask, default value = 1. Other fields are open mask.

  • --tag Add Tag item to all flows items, This item have data value defined in user_parameters.h under META_DATA with full mask, default value = 1.

    Also it have tag value defined in user_parameters.h under TAG_INDEX with full mask, default value = 0. Other fields are open mask.

Actions:

  • --port-id Add port redirection action to all flows actions. Port redirection destination is defined in user_parameters.h under PORT_ID_DST, default value = 1.

  • --rss Add RSS action to all flows actions, The queues in RSS action will be all queues configured in the app.

  • --queue Add queue action to all flows items, The queue will change in round robin state for each flow.

    For example:

    The app running with 4 RX queues Flow #0: queue index 0 Flow #1: queue index 1 Flow #2: queue index 2 Flow #3: queue index 3 Flow #4: queue index 0 ...

  • --jump Add jump action to all flows actions. Jump action destination is defined in user_parameters.h under JUMP_ACTION_TABLE, default value = 2.

  • --mark Add mark action to all flows actions. Mark action id is defined in user_parameters.h under MARK_ID, default value = 1.

  • --count Add count action to all flows actions.

  • --set-meta Add set-meta action to all flows actions. Meta data is defined in user_parameters.h under META_DATA with full mask, default value = 1.

  • --set-tag Add set-tag action to all flows actions. Meta data is defined in user_parameters.h under META_DATA with full mask, default value = 1.

    Tag index is defined in user_parameters.h under TAG_INDEX with full mask, default value = 0.

  • --drop Add drop action to all flows actions.

  • --hairpin-queue=N Add hairpin queue action to all flows actions. The queue will change in round robin state for each flow.

    For example:

    The app running with 4 RX hairpin queues and 4 normal RX queues Flow #0: queue index 4 Flow #1: queue index 5 Flow #2: queue index 6 Flow #3: queue index 7 Flow #4: queue index 4 ...

  • --hairpin-rss=N Add hairpin RSS action to all flows actions. The queues in RSS action will be all hairpin queues configured in the app.