There are numerous free software solutions for IPv4 or IPv6 packet forwarding. The Fast Data Project / Vector Packet Processing (FD.io VPP) is a novel and prominent solution. This paper investigates its performance and scalability compared to that of the Linux kernel. The investigation was conducted in accordance with the requirements outlined in the relevant Request for Comments (RFC) documents (RFC 2544, RFC 4814, and RFC 5180) using the siitperf measurement software. Two different test environments were used to eliminate the potential hardware-specific side effects and to gain insight into the performance and scalability of the IPv4 and IPv6 packet forwarding capability of the two investigated solutions. It was found that FD.io VPP outperformed the Linux kernel by approximately an order of magnitude. The configuration of FD.io VPP, along with the details of the measurements, are provided, and the results are presented and analyzed in the paper.

Nowadays we know several IP packet forwarding solutions, and they are getting faster and more efficient. We chose Fast Data Project / Vector Packet Processing (FD.io VPP) for our investigation, because it is regarded as an extremely high speed and secure networking data plane. In this paper, we present how to install and configure FD.io VPP and we also demonstrate its high IP packet forwarding performance compared to that of the Linux kernel. To achieve this, we built a testbed using two Dell PowerEdge R620 servers. One of the servers was the Tester and the siitperf measurement software was used for executing IPv4 and IPv6 packet forwarding performance tests. The other server was the DUT (Device Under Test), on which FD.io VPP was installed and its packet forwarding performance was measured. As a basis for comparison, we also measured the packet forwarding performance of the Linux kernel. It was found that FD.io VPP seriously outperformed the Linux kernel. The details of the measurements and their results are disclosed and analyzed in the paper.