Flow director not spreading the flows on processors

[OAlha1]

Hello,

I am trying to evaluate Intel's flow director technology on a system with a Xeon E5-2643 and 4x10G XL710 Adapter.

The traffic is generated with nuttcp from client1 to server1 and from client2 to server2 (See attached document).

I was expecting Flow Director to pin each flow (different 5 tuples) on a dedicated processor ... but it does not seems to be the case. The flow are always be handle by the same processor.

Am i missing something ? shouldn't the second flow be on a different queue (processor) ?

Thanks

[SYeo3]

Hi oalhassane,

Thank you for contacting Intel.

Yes, the Intel® Ethernet Flow Director will assign the packets to the correct processor core. Can you provide more information on your test environment?

Sincerely,

Sandy

[OAlha1]

Hi Sandy,

Here are some additional info on the setup:

DUT:

Processor: Dual Xeon E5-2643

Memory: 16G

NIC: 4 x 10G SFP+ XL710

Driver: i40e-1.2.38 (downloaded from the Intel website)

Kernel: linux 3.14

Client1/Client2/Server1/Server2:

Processor: i7-2600

Memory: 8G

NIC: 2 x 10G X540

Driver: in tree driver

Kernel: linux 3.2

The DUT is essentially acting as a switch; with a custom kernel module forwarding traffic between client1/server1(blue flow) and client2/server2 (green flow).

Client1/Server1 are in the subnet 192.168.1.0/24

Client2/Server2 are in the subnet 192.168.2.0/24

I've used the set_irq_affinity script (from the i40e package) to setup interrupt affinity on the NICs.

Traffic is generated with nuttcp from Client1/Client2 toward Server1/Server2 respectively.

I was hoping to achieve two simultaneous 10G flows (blue and green in the diagram).... and expecting flow director to assign each flow on a dedicated processor.

However, It seems that all traffic are handled on the same processor.

Thanks

[SYeo3]

Hi oalhassane,

Thanks for providing the additional details. I'll check on this and will update you on our findings.

Sincerely,

Sandy

[SYeo3]

Hi oalhassane,

I'm sorry for the delay.

I would like to refer you to this online document. It has the switches and filter that you can configure to work with the Flow Director.

https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/ixgbe.txt https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/ixgbe.txt

Please let us know if you have any questions on this.

Sincerely,

Sandy