Evaluating the performance of software NICs for 100-Gb/s datacenter traffic control

Abstract

Modern-day datacenters are constantly evolving and scaling to serve more users. Network traffic and flow control is a critical component to enable this trend, and there is a significant amount of new research in this space. Researchers need a platform for quickly implementing and experimenting with new traffic control mechanisms, while keeping up with increasing line rates. We examine the feasibility of implementing new methods of traffic control in software NICs. We analyze their ability to implement traffic control mechanisms at 40-and 100-Gb/s. We find that while they offer a platform for rapid prototyping at 40-Gb/s, they cannot (yet) support 100-Gb/s.