One option is to modify the applications to use DPDK's multi-process support: https://doc.dpdk.org/guides/prog_guide/multi_proc_support.html

Essentially you would have one app read from the real port and then write data to a software queue in shared memory. Instead of having the second app read from a port it would read from the queue.

If you want to build more elaborate combinations of functions, check out our OpenNetVM research project which focused on high performance NF chaining: http://sdnfv.github.io/onvm/

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Timothy Wood, Ph. D.

he/him/his

Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
The George Washington University
http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~timwood

On Thu, Mar 17, 2022 at 5:29 AM Antonio Di Bacco <a.dibacco.ks@gmail.com> wrote:

I have two DPDK applications that are using virtual functions built on top of two physical functions that correspond to the two ports of a 25 Gbps ethernet card. The two physical ports are connected one to the other with an optic fiber.   

Now, I would like to realize the same setup but without using a physical 25 Gbps card, I wonder if this is possible.