[NANOG] DPDK/VPP router
Hello, Is anyone using a routing solution based on DPDK and VPP? I'd like to use commodity server/appliance hardware to build a router capable of 10g+ bandwidth and near maximum pps routing. Looking to have: Bird / FRR (BGP and BFD) LLDP VPN (IPSec or Wireguard) VRRP Thanks.
On Mon Mar 03, 2025 at 01:40:06PM -0500, Craig Smith via NANOG wrote:
Is anyone using a routing solution based on DPDK and VPP? I'd like to use commodity server/appliance hardware to build a router capable of 10g+ bandwidth and near maximum pps routing.
There are various commercial routing solutions based on DPDK for commodity hardware. I'm aware of netElastic (I use this for BNG/CGNAT) and 6Wind as vendors, I'm sure there's others. Simon
We’re pretty happy with TNSR, it routes 100G and handles BGP/WireGuard without sweating for us at the edge. It’s a bit pricey for a license compared to DIY, but it includes competent email support at the base level. Just make sure you get their OK before you start buying hardware, there are certain combinations of CPU + PCI cards that can have trouble with DPDK (mostly on the AMD side from what I hear, but that could be outdated information).
On Mar 3, 2025, at 13:40, Craig Smith via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
Hello,
Is anyone using a routing solution based on DPDK and VPP? I'd like to use commodity server/appliance hardware to build a router capable of 10g+ bandwidth and near maximum pps routing.
Looking to have: Bird / FRR (BGP and BFD) LLDP VPN (IPSec or Wireguard) VRRP
Thanks. _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/FQ5WSTAE...
Hey Craig, I have some experience with this, and can say that with the right setup, it is phenomenally performant with the correct hardware selection. Most intel network cards also have support within VPP/DPDK/XDPstuff for using the DDIO feature, which allows packets to be 'written' from the NIC, directly into the CPU cache, avoiding RAM which is slow by comparison. There are also opportunities for things DDoS scrubbing and eBPF programs. The FRR wiki has a page on 'alternate forwarding planes'. The information may be slightly out of date, I took the time to really grok what was happening. VyOS I believe has a commercially supported version with DPDK support, though you may just prefer the FRR ecosystem. I should note, I am in the process of retiring these machines, in favor of implementing BGP Selective Route Download and make our network more accessible to other engineers. I'd be happy to answer any questions about the experience I've had with this. Thanks, Riley C. O'Connor m32@m32.io On Monday, March 3rd, 2025 at 11:40 AM, Craig Smith via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
Hello,
Is anyone using a routing solution based on DPDK and VPP? I'd like to use commodity server/appliance hardware to build a router capable of 10g+ bandwidth and near maximum pps routing.
Looking to have: Bird / FRR (BGP and BFD) LLDP VPN (IPSec or Wireguard) VRRP
Thanks. _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/FQ5WSTAE...
On 3/3/25 20:40, Craig Smith via NANOG wrote:
Hello,
Is anyone using a routing solution based on DPDK and VPP? I'd like to use commodity server/appliance hardware to build a router capable of 10g+ bandwidth and near maximum pps routing.
Looking to have: Bird / FRR (BGP and BFD) LLDP VPN (IPSec or Wireguard) VRRP
These boys in South Africa did some interesting work: https://www.atomic.co.za/network/purist-open-networking-at-asic-speeds Mark.
Hi This guy is building a router with 10G performance, but the interesting thing was he was able to get it with using the CPU's IP acceleration. Maybe find the detail on this, and maybe you could do it on other hardware. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSQbpS9waIA Mike On 4/3/2025 6:02 am, Mark Tinka via NANOG wrote:
On 3/3/25 20:40, Craig Smith via NANOG wrote:
Hello,
Is anyone using a routing solution based on DPDK and VPP? I'd like to use commodity server/appliance hardware to build a router capable of 10g+ bandwidth and near maximum pps routing.
Looking to have: Bird / FRR (BGP and BFD) LLDP VPN (IPSec or Wireguard) VRRP
These boys in South Africa did some interesting work:
https://www.atomic.co.za/network/purist-open-networking-at-asic-speeds
Mark. _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/2XPIM7DJ...
On 3 Mar 2025, at 19:40, Craig Smith via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
Hello,
Is anyone using a routing solution based on DPDK and VPP? I'd like to use commodity server/appliance hardware to build a router capable of 10g+ bandwidth and near maximum pps routing.
Looking to have: Bird / FRR (BGP and BFD) LLDP VPN (IPSec or Wireguard) VRRP
You will want to be peeking at the myriad of articles by Pim van Pelt @ IPng Networks: https://ipng.ch/s/articles/ or the many presentations he has done, eg a recent one on VPP + sFlow: https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4196-vpp-monitoring-100gb... or MPLS: https://archive.fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-1919-vpp-100mpps-... or BGP/OSPF: https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/speaker/pim_van_pelt/ etc... Googling for VPP + Pim helps ;) Regards, Jeroen
Vyos is working to add DPDK and I'm 95% sure its only in their nightly rolling releases and not in their supported releases. https://blog.vyos.io/vyos-project-update-february-2025 DANOS is fully DPDK but there haven't been any open source releases since Cienna took over the closed source edition. I'm not sure what the Linux Foundation is doing with the Opensource bits. https://danosproject.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DAN/pages/819201/Releases Both are Debian with FRR providing the routing intelligence. On Mon, Mar 3, 2025 at 12:34 PM Jeroen Massar via NANOG < nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
On 3 Mar 2025, at 19:40, Craig Smith via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
Hello,
Is anyone using a routing solution based on DPDK and VPP? I'd like to use commodity server/appliance hardware to build a router capable of 10g+ bandwidth and near maximum pps routing.
Looking to have: Bird / FRR (BGP and BFD) LLDP VPN (IPSec or Wireguard) VRRP
You will want to be peeking at the myriad of articles by Pim van Pelt @ IPng Networks: https://ipng.ch/s/articles/
or the many presentations he has done, eg a recent one on VPP + sFlow:
https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4196-vpp-monitoring-100gb... or MPLS:
https://archive.fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-1919-vpp-100mpps-...
or BGP/OSPF: https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/speaker/pim_van_pelt/ etc...
Googling for VPP + Pim helps ;)
Regards, Jeroen
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There is a youtuber [1] called Tomaž Zaman who is bringing a new prosumer router to market. He mentioned in one of his videos that he is looking to bring vpp to the low-end market, and he has stated one of his aims is to provide a software distribution that can run on other common platforms. I am keeping an eye on him! [1] https://www.youtube.com/@tomazzaman
participants (9)
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Chris Hills -
Craig Smith -
d＠nielmarks.com -
Jared Geiger -
Jeroen Massar -
Mark Tinka -
Mike O'Connor -
Riley O -
Simon Lockhart