[netguy6]

Since it offers 20Gbps to the VM, i'd guess it's a 25GbE NIC, since those and accompanying switches have just come out.

VXLAN in the NIC (and the switch) at full line-rate offload has been a thing for at least 18-24 months.

Most Modern NICs also support all of the features listed here, like checksum offload, Receive steering, multi-queue, etc. Check out Mellanox CX4/5, Intel X710, QLogic, and Netronome if you want fancy stuff. They aren't even that expensive anymore.

Their Linux driver has support for every current and future standard: 1/2.5/5/10/25/40/50/100/200/400G, nice future proofing.

They also have a DPDK driver: http://dpdk.org/browse/dpdk/tree/drivers/net/ena/base/ena_co...

[illumin8]

Thanks, but my guess is that it's actually a bonded 2x 10Gbps link, which would also give you 20gbps, and cost a lot less per port.

[netguy6]

With current per port costs and economics, that doesn't make much sense. The $/Gbps/Watt improves with every spin of the chip, and every increase in serdes bandwidth.

10GbE (64x10G) - ~$4,500, $70/port

10GbE (32x40G) - ~$6,000, $50/port

25GbE (72x25G) - ~$7,000, $100/port (Seen as low as $5k)

25GbE (32x100G) - ~$9,000, $75/port (Seen as low as $7k)

2x 10GbE = $100

1x 25GbE = $75

Not to mention the extra cabling costs, and complexity.

[wmf]

I'm seeing 25G at the same price as 10G, but I'm not using Amazonomics.