Date:   Tue, 29 Jun 2021 11:49:40 +0100
From:   David Woodhouse <dwmw2@...radead.org>
To:     Jason Wang <jasowang@...hat.com>, netdev@...r.kernel.org
Cc:     Eugenio Pérez <eperezma@...hat.com>,
        Willem de Bruijn <willemb@...gle.com>,
        "Michael S.Tsirkin" <mst@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 3/5] vhost_net: remove virtio_net_hdr validation, let
 tun/tap do it themselves

On Tue, 2021-06-29 at 11:43 +0800, Jason Wang wrote:
> > The kernel on a c5.metal can transmit (AES128-SHA1) ESP at about
> > 1.2Gb/s from iperf, as it seems to be doing it all from the iperf
> > thread.
> > 
> > Before I started messing with OpenConnect, it could transmit 1.6Gb/s.
> > 
> > When I pull in the 'stitched' AES+SHA code from OpenSSL instead of
> > doing the encryption and the HMAC in separate passes, I get to 2.1Gb/s.
> > 
> > Adding vhost support on top of that takes me to 2.46Gb/s, which is a
> > decent enough win.
> 
> 
> Interesting, I think the latency should be improved as well in this
> case.

I tried using 'ping -i 0.1' to get an idea of latency for the
interesting VoIP-like case of packets where we have to wake up each
time.

For the *inbound* case, RX on the tun device followed by TX of the
replies, I see results like this:

     --- 172.16.0.2 ping statistics ---
     141 packets transmitted, 141 received, 0% packet loss, time 14557ms
     rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.380/0.419/0.461/0.024 ms


The opposite direction (tun TX then RX) is similar:

     --- 172.16.0.1 ping statistics ---
     295 packets transmitted, 295 received, 0% packet loss, time 30573ms
     rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.454/0.545/0.718/0.024 ms


Using vhost-net (and TUNSNDBUF of INT_MAX-1 just to avoid XDP), it
looks like this. Inbound:

     --- 172.16.0.2 ping statistics ---
     139 packets transmitted, 139 received, 0% packet loss, time 14350ms
     rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.432/0.578/0.658/0.058 ms

Outbound:

     --- 172.16.0.1 ping statistics ---
     149 packets transmitted, 149 received, 0% packet loss, time 15391ms
     rtt mn/avg/max/mdev = 0.496/0.682/0.935/0.036 ms


So as I expected, the throughput is better with vhost-net once I get to
the point of 100% CPU usage in my main thread, because it offloads the
kernel←→user copies. But latency is somewhat worse.

I'm still using select() instead of epoll() which would give me a
little back — but only a little, as I only poll on 3-4 fds, and more to
the point it'll give me just as much win in the non-vhost case too, so
it won't make much difference to the vhost vs. non-vhost comparison.

Perhaps I really should look into that trick of "if the vhost TX ring
is already stopped and would need a kick, and I only have a few packets
in the batch, just write them directly to /dev/net/tun".

I'm wondering how that optimisation would translate to actual guests,
which presumably have the same problem. Perhaps it would be an
operation on the vhost fd, which ends up processing the ring right
there in the context of *that* process instead of doing a wakeup?

FWIW if I pull in my kernel patches and stop working around those bugs,
enabling the TX XDP path and dropping the virtio-net header that I
don't need, I get some of that latency back:

     --- 172.16.0.2 ping statistics ---
     151 packets transmitted, 151 received, 0% packet loss, time 15599ms
     rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.372/0.550/0.661/0.061 ms

     --- 172.16.0.1 ping statistics ---
     214 packets transmitted, 214 received, 0% packet loss, time 22151ms
     rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.453/0.626/0.765/0.049 ms

My bandwidth tests go up from 2.46Gb/s with the workarounds, to
2.50Gb/s once I enable XDP, and 2.52Gb/s when I drop the virtio-net
header. But there's no way for userspace to *detect* that those bugs
are fixed, which makes it hard to ship that version.


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