DPDK with Containernet

DPDK with Containernet

[Thea Corinne Rossman]

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Hello! Has anyone here used Containernet with DPDK before? Our use-case is
evaluating DPDK-based applications under different network conditions
(e.g., lossy links).

I've watched this talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPshkuEPOOU, and
I've done pretty extensive research into running DPDK applications in
containers for intra-host container networking. (+ thank you to all those
who responded to my previous question on this forum!)

My understanding is that there are two approaches to DPDK + container
networking:

   - Aggregation: Using VirtIo-User (containers) and vhost-user (backend)
   which offers a software PMD. This also needs to be connected to a virtual
   switching infrastructure on the host.
   - Slicing: Using SR-IOV or similar to give containers direct access to
   devices.

I'm not sure how to reconcile these options with Containernet, both
conceptually and in practice.

Conceptually:

   - Does Containernet's OVS
   <https://github.com/containernet/containernet/blob/8e0aabef8f23def3961b30897dd486191d9bd693/util/install.sh#L406>/switching
provide
   the appropriate infrastructure for the aggregation option?
   - Is Containernet even compatible with the VF/slicing option? Can I just
   build a Containernet node from a DPDK-compatible Dockerfile, set it up with
   the correct (sliced) PCI addresses, and then connect it to Containernet's
   emulated network? Would I have to configure anything on the emulated
   network to make this work?

In practice: this seems like a really common use-case (DPDK is specifically
mentioned in the original Containernet talk!). However, I can't find any
clear guides or images for this, in the Containernet repo or otherwise.

Thank you in advance!
Thea

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