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Silicom SPDK-1.1 Snort DAQ

avatar July 12, 2016

Silicom SPDK-1.1 Snort DAQ

Quick Overview

Snort DAQ (Data AcQuisition) component is a software interface between platform’s data path and Snort engine. SPDK offer an efficient DAQ of intel® DPDK and Snort engine.
Compared to standard Linux based implementation, where data path is interrupt based and is implemented in kernel, SPDK breaks free of this paradigm and brings packet processing ever close to wire speed.

Two important advantages are offered by SPDK compared to standard DPDK. First, smart and easy buffers management that makes more stable and scalable application. Second, is threaded clustering capability with software based processing load balancing, that enable ultimate optimization of packet processing.

Testing SPDK DAQ was performed in order to reveal the extent in which it both:
1) Enhances Snort performance
2) Scales up linearly, using SPDK threads cluster

Table 1 – Summary of Performence Number of SPDK DAQ

Setup Type Rule Mbps MBps pps Average Paket Size Latency
HW RSS 16 Instances Community 2840 355 441000 800 5-6ms
HW RSS 16 Instances VRT 1910 239 295000 810 6-8ms
Cluster 16 Instances Community 2740 342 436000 780 3-4ms
Cluster 16 Instances VRT 1830 229 291300 780 2-3ms
Cluster 32 Instances Community 4500 560 730000 760 5-6ms
Cluster 32 Instances VRT 3250 405 520000 770 5-6ms

Testing real life scenario with Snort is an important aspect of the work carried out here in these tests. Having client and server installation, along with VRT rules, brings the test setup as close to actual production grade Snort as can be, with true reflection of results expected in the field.