SRPerf: a Performance Evaluation Framework for IPv6 Segment Routing

Abstract

Segment Routing is a form of loose source routing. It provides the ability to include a list of instructions (called segments), in the packet headers. The Segment Routing architecture has been first implemented with the MPLS dataplane and then, quite recently, with the IPv6 dataplane (SRv6). IPv6 Segment Routing (SRv6) is a promising solution to support advanced services such as Traffic Engineering, Service Function Chaining, Virtual Private Networks, and Load Balancing. The SRv6 data-plane is supported in many different software forwarding engines including the Linux kernel and VPP software router, as well as in hardware devices. In this paper, we present SRPerf, a performance evaluation framework for software and hardware implementations of SRv6. SRPerf is able to perform different benchmarking tests such as throughput and latency. For throughput tests, we use the Partial Drop Rate (PDR) to characterize a system under test. The architecture of SRPerf can be easily extended to support new benchmarking methodologies as well as different SRv6 implementations. We have used SRPerf to evaluate the performance of the SRv6 implementation in the Linux kernel and in VPP. SRPerf is a valuable tool in the context of software forwarding engines where new features can be added at fast pace, as it helps experimenters to validate their work. In particular, we describe how we have leveraged SRPerf to validate the implementation of some SRv6 behaviors that were missing or wrongly implemented in the Linux kernel mainline.

SRv6-PM: Performance Monitoring of SRv6 Networks with a Cloud-Native Architecture

“…A Linux node can associate a SID to one of the supported operations, so that the operation will be executed on the received packets that have such SID as IPv6 Destination Address. More details on the Linux SRv6 implementation with a list of the currently supported operations can be found in [35].…”

Segment Routing: a Comprehensive Survey of Research Activities, Standardization Efforts and Implementation Results

“…SRPerf has been used to evaluate the performance of the SRv6 implementations in the Linux kernel and in VPP . Moreover in [153], the authors propose the evaluation of an enhanced Linux kernel, which has been obtained by adding the implementation of missing behaviors and fixing the implementation of existing ones.…”