memif + T-REX: CNF Testing Made Easy

PANTHEON.tech’s developer Július Milan has managed to integrate memif into the T-REX Traffic Generator. T-REX is a traffic generator, which you can use to test the speed of network devices. Now you can test Cloud-Native Functions, which support memif natively in the cloud, without specialized network cards!

Imagine a situation, where multiple cloud-native functions are interconnected or chained via memif. Tracking their utilization would be a nightmare. With our memif + T-REX solution, you can make arbitrary measurements – effortlessly and straightforward. The results will be more precise and direct, as opposed to creating adapters and interconnecting them, in order to be able to measure traffic.

Our commitment to open-source has a long track record. With lighty-core being open-sourced and our CTO Robert Varga being the top-single contributor to OpenDaylight source code, we are proving once again that our heart belongs to the open-source community.

The combination of memif & T-REX makes measuring cloud-native function performance easy & straightforward.

memif, the “shared memory packet interface”, allows for any client (VPP, libmemif) to communicate with DPDK using shared memory. Our solution makes memif highly efficient, with zero-copy capability. This saves memory bandwidth and CPU cycles while adding another piece to the puzzle for achieving a high-performance CNF.

It is important to note, that zero-copy works on the newest version of DPDK. However, memif & T-REX can be used in zero-copy mode, when the T-REX side of the pair is the master. The other side of the memif pair (VPP or some cloud-native function) is the zero-copy slave.

T-REX, developed by Cisco, solves the issue of buying stateful/realistic traffic generators, which can set your company back by up to 500 000$. This limits the testing capabilities and slows down the entire process. T-REX solves this by being an accessible, open-source, stateful/stateless traffic generator, fueled by DPDK.

Services that function in the cloud are characterized by an unlimited presence. They are accessed from anywhere, with a functional connection and are located on remote servers. This may curb costs since you do not have to create and maintain your servers in a dedicated, physical space.

PANTHEON.tech is proud to be a technology enabler, with continuous support for open-source initiatives, communities & solutions.

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