Is it possible to write a web server using Intel DPDK? - dpdk

I am a newbie to Intel DPDK.
I am planning to write an http web server.
Can it be implemented using the following logic using DPDK ?
Get the packets and send it to Worker Logical Cores.
A Worker Logical Core build 'http reuqest' sent by the client, using
the incoming packets.
Process the 'http reuest' in the Worker Logical Core and produce an
'http response'.
Create packets for the 'http response' and dispatch them to output
software rings.
I am not sure whether the above is feasible or not.
Is it possible to write a web server using Intel DPDK?

It is lot of work since you'll need a TCP/IP stack on top of the DPDK. Even once you'll have ported a TCP/IP stack on top of DPDK (or reusing a port from an OS), you won't have the performance because it is easy to write C code that runs, but writting a TCP/IP stack that sustains good performances, it is a very difficult development.
You can try http://www.6wind.com/6windgate-performance/tcp-termination/ : they do not provide a HTTP server, but they provide a L7 like TCP socket support to build the fastest HTTP servers.

Yes, its possible to build a Web Server using DPDK. You could either use a KNI interface provided by DPDK. All packets received on a KNI interfaces are still routed through the kernel network stack -- however, and heres the catch, this is still faster than directly receiving packets from the kernel (requires multiple copies). With DPDK you could still ping cores to RX and different lcores to TX. You could then instruct your OS not to use these lcores for anything else. So you really have dedicated lcores for packet TX and RX. Ensure that Tx and RX lcores lie on different CPU sockets.
More information at:
http://dpdk.org/doc/guides/sample_app_ug/kernel_nic_interface.html

Related

enable Dpdk application talk to Linux process

I have DPDK-20.11.3 installed.
Given that a Dpdk application is a process from the Linux point of view, I would assume that there should be ways (possibly with constraints) of communication between the Dpdk application and Linux native application (capable of using Linux sockets interface).
What are the possible options, that I could explore? Pipes, shared memory? I don't have any tcp/ip stack ported on dpdk, so I likely can't use sockets at all?
I'd appreciate links and documents that could shed some light on this. Thanks!
You can use KNI interface. Here is the Sample app for the same.
https://doc.dpdk.org/guides-20.11/sample_app_ug/kernel_nic_interface.html
As clarified over comments the real intention is to send and receive full or partial packets into the Kernel network subsystem. The easiest way is to make use of DPDK PCAP PMD or TAP PMD.
How to use:
Tap:
ensure the DPDK application is running in a Linux environment.
making use of DPDK testpmd, l2fwd or skeleton update DPDK EAL by --vdev=net_tap0.
Starting DPDK application will result in tap interface dtap0
bring the interface up by sudo ip link set dtap0 up
One can assign an IP address or use a raw promiscuous device.
pinging both kernel thread and DPDK TAP PMD thread, up to 4Gbps of packet throughput can be achieved for small packets.
PCAP:
Create veth interface pair in Linux using ip link add dev v1 type veth peer name v2
use v1 in linux network subsystem
use v2 in dpdk application by --vdev=net_pcap0,iface=v2
Note:
my recommendation is to use the TAP interface since it is a dedicated PMD handling probe and removed with the DPDK application. Assigning IP address from Linux also allows it to be part of a local termination, firewall and netfilter processing. All kernel network knobs for ipv4formward, TCP, udp and sctp can be exercised too.
I do not recommend the use of KNI PMD, since it is deprecated and will be removed, additional thread in the kernel to handle the buffer management and Netlink, external dependency to be built (not done for most distros package distribution).
environment

How to send packet another server using dpdk?

My question is how to send packet another Physical Server from my Computer using dpdk.
I already watched example code rxtx_callbacks and i want to use this code.
but there is no place to enter a specific ip and port to another server.
how i can send packets to places on a server using dpdk with specified ip and port?
and how i can receive packets using dpdk?
Is l3fwd correct or is this another concept?
help me
DPDK is an open-source library that allows one to bypass Kernel and ETH-IP-TCP stack to send packets from userspace directly on NIC or other custom hardware. There are multiple examples and projects like pktgen and TREX which uses to generate user-defined packets (desired MAC address, VLAN, IP and TCP-UDP) payload.
For the queries
how i can send packets to places on a server using dpdk with specified ip and port?
[Answer] make use of DPDK PKTGEN as an easy way to generate. Other examples are pcap based burst replay and trex.
But the easiest way to generate and send traffic is using scapy with DPDK sample application skeleton. Following are the steps required to achieve the same.
Install DPDK to desired platform (preferably Linux)
build the DPDK example skeleton found in path [dpdk root folder]/examples/skeleton
bind a physical NIC (if traffic needs to be send out of server) with userspace drivers like igb_uio, uio_pci_generic or vfio-pci
start the application with options '-l 1 --vdev=net_tap0,iface=scapyEth'. this will create TAP interface with name scapyEth.
using scapy now create your custom packet with desired MAC, VLAN, IP and Port numbers.
and how i can receive packets using dpdk?
[Answer] on receiver side run DPDK application like testpmd, l2fwd, or skeleton if packets needs to received by Userspace DPDK application or any Linux sockets can receive the UDP packets.
Note: easiest way to check whether packets are received is to run tcpudmp. example tcpdump -eni eth1 -Q in (where eth1 is physical interface on Reciever Server.
Note: Since the request how i can send packets to places on a server is not clear
Using DPDK one can send packets through a physical interface using dedicated NIC, FPGA and wireless devices
DPDK can send packets among applications using memif interface
DPDK can send packets between VM using virtio and vhost
DPDK can send and receive packets to kernel, where Kernel routing stack and ARP table determine which kernel interface will forward the packets.

p2p open source library tcp/udp multicast support

I have a certain application running on my computer. The same application can run on many computers on a LAN or different places in the world. I want to communicate between them. So I basically want a p2p system. But I will always know which computers(specific IP address) will be peers. I just want peers to have join and leave functionality. The single most important aim will be communication speed and time required. I assume simple UDP multicast (if anything like that exists) between peers will be fastest possible solution. I dont want to retransmit messages even if lost. Should I use an existing p2p library e.g. libjingle,etc. or just create some basic framework from scratch as my needs are pretty basic?
I think you're missing the point of UDP. It's not saving any time in a sense that a message gets faster to the destination, it's just you're posting the message and don't care if it arrives safely to the other side. On WAN - it will probably not arrive on the other side. UDP accross networks is problematic, as it can be thrown out by any router on the way which is tight on bandwidth - there's no guarantee of delivery for it.
I wouldn't suggest using UDP out of the topology under your control.
As to P2P vs directed sockets - the question is what it is that you need to move around. Do you need bi/multidirectional communication between all the peers, or you're talking to a single server from all the nodes?
You mentioned multicast - that would mean that you have some centralized source of data that transmits information and all the rest listen - in this case there's no benefit for P2P, and multicast, as a UDP protocol, may not work well accross multiple networks. But you can use TCP connections to each of the nodes, and "multicast" on your own, and not through IGMP. You can (and should) use threading and non-blocking sockets if you're concerned about sending blocking you, and of course you can use the QoS settings to "ask" routers to rush your sockets through.
You can use zeromq for support all network communication:
zeromq is a simple library encapsulate TCP and UDP for high level communication.
For P2P you can use the different mode of 0mq :
mode PGM/EPGM for discover member of P2P on your LAN (it use multicast)
mode REQ/REP for ask a question to one member
mode PULL/PUSH for duplicate one resource on the net
mode Publish/subscribe for transmission a file to all requester
Warning, zeromq is hard to install on windows...
And for HMI, use green-shoes ?
i think you should succeed using multicast,
unfortunately i do not know any library,
but still in case you have to do it from scratch
take a look at this:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Multicast-HOWTO.html
good luck :-)

Sending arbitrary (raw) packets

I've seen it asked elsewhere but no one answers it to my satisfaction: how can I receive and send raw packets?
By "raw packets", I mean where I have to generate all the headers and data, so that the bytes are completely arbitrary, and I am not restricted in any way. This is why Microsofts RAW sockets won't work, because you can't send TCP or UDP packets with incorrect source addresses.
I know you can send packets like I want to with WinPCAP but you cannot receive raw information with it, which I also need to do.
First of all decide what protocol layer you want to test malformed data on:
Ethernet
If you want to generate and receive invalid Ethernet frames with a wrong ethernet checksum, you are more or less out of luck as the checksumming is often done in hardware, and in the cases they're not, the driver for the NIC performs the checksumming and there's no way around that at least on Windows. NetBSD provides that option for most of it drivers that does ethernet checksumming in the OS driver though.
The alternative is to buy specialized hardware, (e.g. cards from Napatech, you might find cheaper ones though), which provides an API for sending and receiving ethernet frames however invalid you would want.
Be aware that sending by sending invalid ethernet frames, the receiving end or a router inbetween will just throw the frames away, they will never reach the application nor the OS IP layer. You'll be testing the NIC or NIC driver on the receiving end.
IP
If all you want is to send/receive invalid IP packets, winpcap lets you do this. Generate the packets, set up winpcap to capture packets, use winpcap to send..
Be aware that packets with an invalid IP checksum other invalid fields, the TCP/IP stack the receiving application runs on will just throw the IP packets away, as will any IP/layer 3 router inbetween the sender and receiver do. They will not reach the application. If you're generating valid IP packets, you'll also need to generate valid UDP and implement a TCP session with valid TCP packets yourself in order for the application to process them, otherwise they'll also be thrown away by the TCP/IP stack
You'll be testing the lower part of the TCP/IP stack on the receiving end.
TCP/UDP
This is not that different from sending/receiving invalid IP packets. You an do all this with winpcap, though routers will not throw them away, as long as the ethernet/IP headers are ok. An application will not receive these packets though, they'll be thrown away by the TCP/IP stack.
You'll be testing the upperpart of the TCP/IP stack on the receiving end.
Application Layer
This is the (sane) way of actually testing the application(unless your "application" actually is a TCP/IP stack, or lower). You send/receive data as any application would using sockets, but generate malformed application data as you want. The application will receive this data, it's not thrown away by lower protocol layers.
Although one particular form of tests with TCP can be hard to test - namely varying the TCP segments sent, if you e.g. want to test that an application correctly interprets the TCP data as a stream. (e.g. you want to send the string "hello" in 5 segments and somehow cause the receiving application to read() the characters one by one). If you don't need speed, you can usually get that behaviour by inserting pauses in the sending and turn off nagel's algorithm (TCP_NDELAY) and/or tune the NIC MTU.
Remember that any muckery with lower level protocols in a TCP stream, e.g. cause one of the packets to have an invalid/diffferent IP source address just gets thrown away by lower level layers.
You'll be testing an application running on top of TCP/UDP(or any other IP protocol).
Alternatives
switch to another OS, where you at least can use raw sockets without the restrictions of recent windows.
Implement a transparent drop insert solution based on the "Ethernet" or "IP" alternative above. i.e. you have your normal client application, your normal server application. You break a cable inbetween them, insert your box with 2 NICs where you programatically alter bytes of the frames received and send them back out again on the other NIC. This'll allow you to easily introduce packet delays in the system as well. Linux' netfilter already have this capability which you can easily build on top of, often with just configuration or scripting.
If you can alter the receiving application you want to test, have it read data from something else such as a file or pipe and feed it random bytes/packets as you wish.
Hybrid model, mainly for TCP application testing, but also useful for e.g. testing UDP ICMP responses. Set up a TCP connection using sockets. Send your invalid application data using sockets. Introduce random malformed packets(much easier than programming with raw sockets that set up a TCP session and then introduce lower layer errors). Send malformed IP or UDP/TCP packets, or perhaps ICMP packets using WinPcap, though communicate with the socket code to the winpcap code so you'll the addresses/port correct, such that the receiving application sees it.
Check out NS/2

LINUX: Is piping across a LAN possible? If so, is it desirable? What are some other options?

I am currently working on creating a scalable server design in C++ for a ubuntu server. Is piping across a LAN achievable? What is the best option for speedy inter-LAN communication?
Background Info for those interested:
I'm making a multiplayer game with a friend. It's going to be TCP based. The thing is for linux making a server be multi client seems to mean creating a new process per client or select()ing through a fdset of connected clients. I want to combine these approaches and have a "manager" process that will select through maybe 100 clients and report any changes up the chain to a "taskmaster" process which will then distribute the change to the other manager processes. This will work fine with piping if the managers and taskmasters are on the same box, but if I want to scale it later I need a speedy inter-Lan communication method.
Checkout the netcat application. On one machine, you can run netcat as a server, piping the output to your process:
nc -l -p 1234 | myApp
This will listen on TCP port 1234, and print everything it receives out over stdout.
And on a second machine:
myApp | nc 192.168.1.2 1234
Where 192.168.1.2 is the IP address of the first machine. You'll need to look up the nc man page for the specific details - the above is all from memory.
A stream socket (SOCK_STREAM, combined with AF_UNIX if stricly local or AF_INET if over tcp/ip) is the network equivalent of a bidirectional pipe, with all data ordered.
Just the way you are asking that question, you seem to have the perception that for communication between related processes, pipes is the necessary answer.
The way to think about it is that you need communication between two processes, whether they be a couple of components in your system, client server pair, or whatever. Then you pick a mechanism that works for the given geography. Pipes work if the processes are local. You could also use shared memory queues for a no copy channel. You could also use IP (via sockets) over the loopback interface. To go across the network (WAN or LAN) you pretty much have to use IP.
Lastly, in addition to TCP, consider using UDP as well, because you get builtin message boundaries and easier endpoint management.
LANs typically are Ethernet based networks. This means that any protocol running on your network must be Ethernet based. TCP/IP can and does run on Ethernet networks but pipes and Local sockets are only designed to be an inter-process communication on a single host so is totally not suitable for multi-host applications.
If the various components run on different host, you will need to link them via some TCP/IP based protocol. There are some legacy protocols like IPX and UUCP that run over Ethernet but these have been totally superseded by TCP/IP.