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Who, in 2015, agrees that BSD is better at networking? I remember these claims being made in the late 90s, and perhaps they were true back then, but it's been
by jemfinch 11y ago
Who, in 2015, agrees that BSD is better at networking?
I remember these claims being made in the late 90s, and perhaps they were true back then, but it's been 15 years, and I would be surprised if Linux hasn't caught up by virtue of its faster development pace, greater mindshare, and increased corporate/datacenter usage.
So, in all seriousness: what recent, well argued essays/papers can you refer me to so I can understand the claim that BSD networking is still better than Linux in 2015?
- jedberg 11y agoThere was a good discussion about it on reddit about 10 months back: http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2d5wzg/linux_network_stack/ http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2d5wzg/linux_network_... It was also linked to from HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8167126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8167126 Both have some pretty good sources (and some not so good sources too)
- vezzy-fnord 11y agoFacebook made the rounds last year for a job posting that stated the goal was "for the Linux kernel network stack to rival or exceed that of FreeBSD": http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTc1NjY http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTc1NjY
- teacup50 11y agohttp://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/ http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/ Shipped in FreeBSD by default, developed for FreeBSD first -- and that's just the bleeding edge side of things.
- snoman 11y agoSome of the very same reasons you give for the proposition that network performance having caught up can be used to argue that it may have slowed down (ie feature creep and bloat). So the other question is: who, in 2015 disagrees and what recent, well argued, essays/papers can you refer us to that might demonstrate that anything has changed at all.
- the-dude 11y agoFacebook thinks so : http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/14/08/06/1731218/facebook-seeks-devs-to-make-linux-network-stack-as-good-as-freebsds http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/14/08/06/1731218/facebook-seek...
- tachion 11y agoOne thing - Netmap, that can give you speeds like ~10mpps. It was first developed for FreeBSD and there was a proposition for Linux to adopt the code, but for some reason they havent. Since then, Linux tries to catch up, but its not like FreeBSD/Netmap is staying in one place either.
- justincormack 11y agoNo. Netmap is available for Linux too and there are other options like dpdk available on both. But that's not the FreeBSD network stack that's an Ethernet stack. The kernel IP stack apparently scales better in FreeBSD but I have not seen recent hard data. Netflix do stream all their content from FreeBSD though.
- the-dude 11y agoWhatsapp too IIRC
- martin1975 11y agoHere's an interesting kqueue v epoll benchmark I picked up somewhere when this topic came up.. http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=2124 http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=2124 Time for a epoll for kqueue swap, and make this performance debate go away for both, Linux and FreeBSD once and for all. No reason for this pissing contest.
- trentnelson 11y agoRegistered I/O on Windows is about three to four decades ahead, conceptually. (As in, the stuff that facilitates registered I/O is based on concepts that can be traced back to VMS, released in 1977. Namely, the Irp, plus, a kernel designed around waitable events, not runnable processes.)
- 15155 11y agokqueue allows more sophisticated action to occur with each call. epoll requires more syscalls to do the same stuff. that's not responsible for the differences speed, but at this level syscalls are a meaningful expense.
- martin1975 11y agoHere's an interesting kqueue v epoll benchmark I picked up somewhere when this topic came up awhile ago.. http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=2124 http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=2124 Time for a epoll for kqueue swap, and make this performance debate go away for both, Linux and FreeBSD once and for all, unless this involved redesigning the kernel entirely... not sure.
- est 11y agoThere isn't SO_SPLICE on linux. splice() needs a pipe.
- nly 11y agoIsn't SO_SPLICE a bit like sendfile() on Linux?