[snip] To inject science into the discussion: http://bsdrp.net/documentation/examples/forwarding_performance_lab_of_an_ibm... And he maintains a test setup to check for performance regressions: http://bsdrp.net/documentation/examples/freebsd_performance_regression_lab Now, this is using the in-kernel stack, not netmap/pfring/etc that uses all the batching-y, stack-shallow-y implementations that the kernel currently doesn't have. But, there are people out there doing science on it and trying very hard to kick things along. The nice thing about what has come out of the DPDK related stuff is, well, the bar is set very high now. Now it's up to the open source groups to stop messing around and do something about it. If you're interested in more of this stuff, go poke Jim at pfsense/netgate. -adrian (This and RSS work is plainly in my "stuff I do for fun" category, btw.)