For what I have seen, most applications using DPDK do not require TCP/IP handling. For example, packet monitoring, data transfers between nodes that are just co

For what I have seen, most applications using DPDK do not require TCP/IP handling. For example, packet monitoring, data transfers between nodes that are just connected by a single cable (thus no need for routing or TCP arrival guarantees)... But even reimplementing the TCP/IP stack it would probably be more faster: you don't make system calls (which are expensive), you don't go around copying every other to socket buffers, you don't have to decide which application should receive the packet... It's hard, but it can yield performance improvements. On the other hand, I'd try to activate other features for improved performance, such as running applications in the same cores that the queues are running on, configuring the NIC RX queues and using jumboframes (>1514 bytes) if you control the network path. All of these can yield noticeable improvements without much effort.