Re: New vyatta-nsp list

[Adrian Chadd <adrian () creative net au>]

On Fri, May 27, 2011, George Bonser wrote:

> > It's actually rather hard with current pc hardware to get to multiple
> > cores engaged in paralell per input interfaces. while you can plan for
> > various cases the the one to account for is the small packet
> > performance not overwhelming the capabilities of a single cpu core.
>
> Not anymore.  Linux will do processor per flow and it will remember
> which processor handed it traffic outgoing and try to route the reply
> back to the same CPU so you reduce cache misses.  

FreeBSD is doing much the same, both for TCP flows and for packet
routing.

The real fun will be when open source freebsd/linux stops trying to do
per-flow tracking and optimises their forwarding paths. From what I've
heard on the lists, NICs are certainly doing small packet linerate now.



Adrian