Linux Software Router: Data Plane Optimization and Performance Evaluation

Recent technological advances provide an excellent opportunity to achieve truly effective results in the field of open Internet devices, also known as Open Routers or ORs. Even though some initiatives have been undertaken over the last few years to investigate ORs and related topics, other extensive areas still require additional investigation. In this contribution we report the results of the in-depth optimization and testing carried out on a PC Open Router architecture based on Linux software and COTS hardware. The main focus of this paper was the forwarding performance evaluation of different OR Linux-based software architectures. This analysis was performed with both external (throughput and latencies) and internal (profiling) measurements. In particular, for the external measurements, a set of RFC2544 compliant tests was also proposed and analyzed. Index Terms Linux Router; Open Router; RFC 2544; IP forwarding.