[Bro] A few questions

[Nicholas Weaver]

On Feb 4, 2010, at 8:06 AM, Tyler Schoenke wrote:
> The Bro wiki mentions that Click! is limited to 2Gbps in tests.  I
> wonder if that is still true?  I was thinking about the possibility of
> installing a 10 Gig card in the current server as well as some
> additional 1 Gig ports.  Then using Click to split the traffic to some
> workers on this box and send the rest out the additional 1 Gig ports to
> some additional workers.  That way I could use this server as a frontend
> plus workers, but expand the cluster to additional computers.

That may work today:  The Intel Research Labs folks have been able to get Click to move 12 Gbps through a single dual-interface PCIe x8 (pretty close to the theoretical limit, BTW) Intel 10 GigE card using kernel mode drivers and the latest Intel hardware.  With a separate card for in and out on separate PCI-E busses, you might indeed be able to get 10 Gbps in and 10 Gbps packet-marked back out.  I don't know if their click kernel mode drivers are available.

http://routebricks.org/pubs.html

However, Click Kernel mode only runs under Linux.


It would also probably be easier to just send packets back out a different 10 Gbps interface, and just overwrite the MAC and let a COTS switch then handle the routing to particular worker nodes, rather than having a collection of 1 Gbps interfaces.