Re: [Bsdrp-users] BSDRP with Netmap on Appliance ServerU

[Olivier Cochard-L. <ol...@co...>]

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 5:37 PM Erlon Silva <er...@vn...>
wrote:

> Hi Olivier!
> I'm a big admirer of your work with BSDRP, a great alternative to already
> known solutions.
> I have a network device known as ServerU, which is approved and
> recommended for FreeBSD due to netmap.
> This way, the box's performance can be increased by up to 13x (according
> to them).
>

Hi,
netmap is just a framework, and indeed BSDRP as FreeBSD based supports
netmap… but you need softwares that uses this framework now.
And with BSDRP, there is pkt-gen and nmreplay (a packet generator and
replay) that are using netmap.
But there are no "forwarding|routing" softwares that are using netmap on
BSDRP.
There is a very recent Cisco VPP port that should soon support netmap and
dpdk on FreeBSD (so BSDRP), but is not available today.


> I realized that BSDRP is a FreeBSD image and that it also has netmap.
> I would like to ask a simple question: when installing BSDRP on ServerU,
> can I use netmap natively on ServerU? I need to resolve this doubt, as I
> will use it for BGP and OSPF routing.
> I would also like you to share with me about netmap, whether it would only
> work with IPv4, as I have been looking at the BSDRP 1992 changelog and it
> contains the information netmap-fwd 0.2: IPv4 router over netmap for
> FreeBSD.
>

netmap-fwd was a PoC, and isn’t usable compared to a standard routing stack.

What is ServerU ? It just need NIC compliant with netmap, cf "supported
devices" chapter in https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?netmap(4)

Regards,
Olivier