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> However, considering Netflix uses FreeBSD on their edge nodes and has put a lot of work into the upstream to improve networking (among other things), it would
by ashtonkem 5y ago
> However, considering Netflix uses FreeBSD on their edge nodes and has put a lot of work into the upstream to improve networking (among other things), it wouldn't surprise me if it's technically superior to the Linux stack.
Possible. But it's also possible that the founder of the team was a BSD person. You occasionally get cases where the preferences of one key person affects things in the long run. At this point I'm sure that they're baked in, because removing all that code would not be worth the effort too, so even if it was better when Netflix went online, that doesn't guarantee that it's still true today.
That being said, Linux is also used in a ton of places, including high network jobs. It would take a decent sized amount of evidence to convince me that all of those other places were wrong and basically only Netflix was right to use BSD in network heavy cases.
My suspicion is that either:
1. The difference is minimal to negligent, and not enough to justify mixed OS development
or
2. The difference is significant, but you have to be pushing your network much harder than most teams ever do for it to show up.
- ksec 5y agoReplying to all the post above as well. FreeBSD networking during WhatsApp and Netflix starting era was definitely better than Linux. Both in their specific usage pattern. So it wasn’t some ideological reason but actual technical one. But that was 10+ years ago. If I remember correctly from reading Meta / Facebook successfully switch all of WhatsApp large bare metal 4U server to their standardise Linux blade by 2017. They also spent 3 years working on Erlang BEAM and Networking so it was working close enough. Netflix continues to use FreeBSD and it is working well for them. Both the lead engineer comment and submit update on HN frequently. Do a search and it should be easy to find it. ( on my phone now so can’t quote links ) 2022 now I think any general advantage of FreeBSD over Linux in networking performance would likely be minimal. But it also doesn’t make sense to switch to another for the sake of OS unification.
- ybloviator 5y agoIf anyone wants to learn (as opposed to arguing), the papers on Netflix's TLS offloading work are a fun read. And say what you will, something like 20% of all internet traffic has a FreeBSD endpoint. And doing 400Gb/s of encrypted streaming from one box is quite an accomplishment. I would argue the reason someone like Netflix or any of the other large orgs using FreeBSD come there is for the simplicity/cohesiveness. If you're looking to do something like in-kernel TLS or something, way easier on something smaller, documented, and with an OS devel team that will likely incorporate your work in future releases.
- ksec 5y ago>And doing 400Gb/s of encrypted streaming from one box is quite an accomplishment. It is amazing. I keep following their work from 100Gbps, 200Gbps, 400Gbps and now looks like 700Gb/s [1]...... woah [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30061718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30061718
- rfraile 5y agoAbout network performance on 2015: https://github.com/freebsd-net/netperf/blob/master/Documentation/netperf.pdf https://github.com/freebsd-net/netperf/blob/master/Documenta...