[ovs-dev] Conntrack performance drop in OVS 2.8

[Nitin Katiyar]

Hi,
The performance of OVS 2.8 (with DPDK 17.05.02) with conntrack configuration has dropped significantly (especially for single flow case) as compared to OVS 2.6 (with DPDK 16.11.4).

Following is the comparison between 2.6.2 and 2.8.2.
PKT Size               # of Flows     MPPS (OVS 2.6)   MPPS (OVS 2.8)     % Drop
============================================================
64                           1                              3.37                        1.86                        44.71
128                         1                              3.09                        1.74                        43.52
256                         1                              2.66                        1.15                        56.84
64                           10000                    1.73                        1.51                        13.03
128                         10000                    1.68                        1.46                        12.65
256                         10000                    1.55                        1.34                        13.60


OVS is configured with 2 DPDK ports (10G -Intel 82599)bonded in bond-slb mode and 1 VHU port. The VM is running the testpmd and it echoes the UDP packets.

I used following OF rules.

ovs-ofctl add-flow br-int "table=0, priority=10,ct_state=-trk,udp,actions=ct(table=1)"
ovs-ofctl add-flow br-int "table=1, priority=1000,ct_state=+new+trk,udp,in_port=10,actions=strip_vlan,ct(commit),output:101"

ovs-ofctl add-flow br-int "table=1, priority=900,ct_state=+est+trk,in_port=10,actions=strip_vlan,output:101"
ovs-ofctl add-flow br-int "table=1, priority=900,ct_state=+est+trk,in_port=101,actions=push_vlan:0x8100,mod_vlan_vid:4044,output:10".

There are 2 bridges configured in OVS which are connected through patch ports. Port 10 above is patch port and 101 is vhu port. OVS is configured with 2 DPDK ports (10G -Intel 82599) bonded in bond-slb mode and 1 VHU port. The VM is running the testpmd which echoes the UDP packets.

The generator (running on different server) is sending UDP traffic by altering the udp source port.

Has anyone else experienced the similar behavior?

Regards,
Nitin






I have simple configuration of SUT with one VM running testpmd echoing traffic on top of OVS.