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    Multicore forwarding

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved TNSR
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    • DerelictD
      Derelict LAYER 8 Netgate @oudenos
      last edited by

      @oudenos

      Try this for the mellanox:

      no dataplane dpdk dev 0000:07:00.0 network num-rx-desc 4096
      dataplane ethernet default-mtu 1500
      dataplane dpdk no-multi-seg
      dataplane cpu corelist-workers 2
      dataplane cpu corelist-workers 3
      dataplane cpu corelist-workers 4
      dataplane cpu corelist-workers 5
      dataplane dpdk dev 0000:07:00.0 network num-rx-queues 4
      dataplane dpdk dev 0000:07:00.0 network num-tx-queues 5
      
      # drop the queue pinning
      interface TenGigabitEthernet7/0/0
          no rx-queue 0 cpu 2
          no rx-queue 1 cpu 3
          no rx-queue 2 cpu 4
          no rx-queue 3 cpu 5
      exit
      

      Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
      A comprehensive network diagram is worth 10,000 words and 15 conference calls.
      DO NOT set a source address/port in a port forward or firewall rule unless you KNOW you need it!
      Do Not Chat For Help! NO_WAN_EGRESS(TM)

      O 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • O
        oudenos @Derelict
        last edited by

        @derelict Thank you for taking time in looking into this and sorry for the delay, I couldn't test earlier.

        I tried the setup you suggested and indeed there is an improvement: now it's forwarding at around 12 Mpps (still 2 millions behind the Intel). Could you please share the ideas behind it?

        As for the problem itself, my guess is the card is only using one rx queue:

        vpp# show hardware-interfaces 
                      Name                Idx   Link  Hardware
        TenGigabitEthernet7/0/0            1     up   TenGigabitEthernet7/0/0
          Link speed: 10 Gbps
          RX Queues:
            queue thread         mode      
            0     vpp_wk_0 (1)   polling   
            1     vpp_wk_1 (2)   polling   
            2     vpp_wk_2 (3)   polling   
            3     vpp_wk_3 (4)   polling   
          Ethernet address b8:ce:f6:cc:f8:28
          Mellanox ConnectX-4 Family
            carrier up full duplex mtu 9206 
            flags: admin-up pmd tx-offload intel-phdr-cksum rx-ip4-cksum
            Devargs: 
            rx: queues 4 (max 1024), desc 1024 (min 0 max 65535 align 1)
            tx: queues 5 (max 1024), desc 1024 (min 0 max 65535 align 1)
            pci: device 15b3:1015 subsystem 15b3:0004 address 0000:07:00.00 numa 0
            switch info: name 0000:07:00.0 domain id 0 port id 65535
            max rx packet len: 65536
            promiscuous: unicast off all-multicast on
            vlan offload: strip off filter off qinq off
            rx offload avail:  vlan-strip ipv4-cksum udp-cksum tcp-cksum tcp-lro 
                               vlan-filter jumbo-frame scatter timestamp keep-crc 
                               rss-hash buffer-split 
            rx offload active: ipv4-cksum 
            tx offload avail:  vlan-insert ipv4-cksum udp-cksum tcp-cksum tcp-tso 
                               outer-ipv4-cksum vxlan-tnl-tso gre-tnl-tso geneve-tnl-tso 
                               multi-segs mbuf-fast-free udp-tnl-tso ip-tnl-tso 
            tx offload active: udp-cksum tcp-cksum 
            rss avail:         ipv4-frag ipv4-tcp ipv4-udp ipv4-other ipv4 ipv6-tcp-ex 
                               ipv6-udp-ex ipv6-frag ipv6-tcp ipv6-udp ipv6-other 
                               ipv6-ex ipv6 l4-dst-only l4-src-only l3-dst-only l3-src-only 
            rss active:        ipv4-frag ipv4-tcp ipv4-udp ipv4-other ipv4 ipv6-tcp-ex 
                               ipv6-udp-ex ipv6-frag ipv6-tcp ipv6-udp ipv6-other 
                               ipv6-ex ipv6 
            tx burst mode: No MPW + SWP  + CSUM + INLINE + METADATA
            rx burst mode: Vector SSE
        
            tx frames ok                                         560
            tx bytes ok                                        33990
            rx frames ok                                  6432726393
            rx bytes ok                                 385963591865
            rx missed                                     1590501788
            extended stats:
              rx_good_packets                             6432726393
              tx_good_packets                                    560
              rx_good_bytes                             385963591865
              tx_good_bytes                                    33990
              rx_missed_errors                            1590501788
              rx_q0_packets                               6432726352
              rx_q0_bytes                               385963583350
              rx_q1_packets                                        9
              rx_q1_bytes                                       1638
              rx_q2_packets                                       14
              rx_q2_bytes                                       3898
              rx_q3_packets                                       18
              rx_q3_bytes                                       2979
              tx_q0_packets                                        7
              tx_q0_bytes                                        602
              tx_q1_packets                                      542
              tx_q1_bytes                                      32562
              tx_q2_packets                                        8
              tx_q2_bytes                                        560
              tx_q3_packets                                        1
              tx_q3_bytes                                         86
              tx_q4_packets                                        2
              tx_q4_bytes                                        180
              rx_unicast_packets                          8023281551
              rx_unicast_bytes                          481396893900
              tx_unicast_packets                                 539
              tx_unicast_bytes                                 32340
              rx_multicast_packets                                59
              rx_multicast_bytes                                7586
              tx_multicast_packets                                20
              tx_multicast_bytes                                1636
              rx_broadcast_packets                                32
              rx_broadcast_bytes                                6777
              tx_broadcast_packets                                 2
              tx_broadcast_bytes                                 120
              tx_phy_packets                                     561
              rx_phy_packets                              8023279352
              tx_phy_bytes                                     36340
              rx_phy_bytes                              513489889095
        
        DerelictD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • DerelictD
          Derelict LAYER 8 Netgate @oudenos
          last edited by

          @oudenos What is the system setup? How many sockets, where the NIC is located, clock speed, core counts, memory amount and layout, 1 dimm, 6 dimms, memory clock etc etc.

          MLNX_DPDK_Quick_Start_Guide

          Was your testing of the Intel X710 in the same system or something else?

          Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
          A comprehensive network diagram is worth 10,000 words and 15 conference calls.
          DO NOT set a source address/port in a port forward or firewall rule unless you KNOW you need it!
          Do Not Chat For Help! NO_WAN_EGRESS(TM)

          O 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • O
            oudenos @Derelict
            last edited by

            @derelict Ok so I run TNSR inside KVM with PCIe device passthrough for the NIC. The hypervisor itself is 2 sockets NUMA, but I allocated 8 cores from the same NUMA node and 8 GB or RAM to the VM.

            The Intel X710 runs inside an identical system on another hypervisor.

            DerelictD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • DerelictD
              Derelict LAYER 8 Netgate @oudenos
              last edited by Derelict

              @oudenos

              Did you allocate the cores on the same NUMA as the CX4 resides?

              The PCI slots are connected to one of the two CPUs controllers directly. If the NIC is on NUMA1 and TNSR is running on NUMA0, then all PCIe requests have to go from Socket 0, to Socket 1, then to the NIC and back. That will put the hurt on performance.

              Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
              A comprehensive network diagram is worth 10,000 words and 15 conference calls.
              DO NOT set a source address/port in a port forward or firewall rule unless you KNOW you need it!
              Do Not Chat For Help! NO_WAN_EGRESS(TM)

              O 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • O
                oudenos @Derelict
                last edited by

                @derelict How can I check that?

                DerelictD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • DerelictD
                  Derelict LAYER 8 Netgate @oudenos
                  last edited by

                  @oudenos Something like this might help you map your system:

                  apt-get update
                  apt-get install hwloc
                  lstopo --output-format png > ~tnsr/lstopo.png

                  Then scp that image off and view it with your preferred method.

                  Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
                  A comprehensive network diagram is worth 10,000 words and 15 conference calls.
                  DO NOT set a source address/port in a port forward or firewall rule unless you KNOW you need it!
                  Do Not Chat For Help! NO_WAN_EGRESS(TM)

                  O 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • O
                    oudenos @Derelict
                    last edited by

                    @derelict Thank you for your help and sorry for the delay.
                    As you correctly pointed out, the NIC is owned by the "wrong" CPU. However the same happens with the Intel one. Now I'm getting inconsistent results across reboots which lead me to think some sort of receive side scaling is involved. I'm working to set up a more realistic testbed with T-Rex as traffic generator and will also address NUMA pinning. I will get back to you as soon as I have results worth sharing with the community.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • L
                      LukeCage
                      last edited by

                      I'm following the thread

                      I'm looking forward to the results
                      good work

                      O 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • O
                        oudenos @LukeCage
                        last edited by

                        @lukecage unfortunately, there is not much to share.
                        I noticed that changing the number of queues at runtime often requires to reboot both the VM (TNSR) and the hypervisor (Ubuntu 20.04 + KVM) to work properly, otherwise many packets will get lost. This happens with both the Mellanox and the Intel, though the first one seems to be "more affected". No idea why, I suspect the only way to correctly reinitialize the NIC is to power-cycle it, maybe I did something wrong with KVM and stuff. (*)
                        Also, I'm pretty sure both NICs use Receive Side Scaling (RSS) and I had to change my traffic generator to TRex in order to have more entropy. I tried this on an Intel E810 card @ 100 Gbps, but it doesn't use scale to more than one CPU core. Again, I believe some sort queue-ish thing went wrong, perhaps I should try with the latest versions of VPP, DPDK, driver and firmware, but it requires building a TNSR-like distro from scratch afaik.

                        (*) If someone is willing to give it a try, it may be worth starting with bare metal rather than KVM: DPDK uses hugepages and KVM by default only supports 2MB hugepages, not 1GB.

                        Eventually, I dediced to give up on this for the moment. It's a shame, but I don't have enough time do all the tests.

                        Thank you very much to the community and @Derelict for the help they provided.

                        L 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • L
                          LukeCage @oudenos
                          last edited by

                          @oudenos which cpu you using ?

                          my goal is 38m pps on gre tunel (i cant test more because my upstream dont allowed)

                          via interface 98m pps

                          and why do you need to run multiple cores, tnsr performance is fine

                          O 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • O
                            oudenos @LukeCage
                            last edited by

                            @lukecage Intel Xeon Silver 4210R
                            With proper NUMA pinning I can achieve 5.5 Mpps IP forwarding per core. Splitting in multiples queues should enable multicore processing.

                            How did you reach those numbers without tuning??

                            L 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • L
                              LukeCage @oudenos
                              last edited by

                              @oudenos

                              I use it directly as bare metal
                              not via vmware or any virtualization

                              As a result, you are positioning a router, if you need high capacity, you should install it tnsr directly to the server.

                              my hardware specs;

                              i9-9900k
                              32gb ram
                              240gb ssd

                              uptime
                              14:51:44 up 69 days, 5:37, 2 users, load average: 1.00, 1.00, 1.00

                              I was using tnsr centos version before, as it is understood from uptime, I switched to ubuntu on that date and now I am using it in ubuntu without any problems.

                              O 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • O
                                oudenos @LukeCage
                                last edited by

                                @lukecage Please run the following and post the result

                                dataplane shell sudo vppctl
                                show hardware-interfaces
                                
                                L 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • L
                                  LukeCage @oudenos
                                  last edited by

                                  @oudenos check private message

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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