[dvdplm]

Is it possible to try this out in a VM? I.e. are there any VMs out there that emulates the hardware well enough to be usable with Ixy?

[en4bz]

DPDK, which this library seems to be inspired by, has a virtio driver that will work for VMs.

You can get into Intel 10GbE hardware for $100 USD [1].

[1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Dell-X520-DA2-10Gb-10Gbe-10-G...

[voltagex_]

How much is the cabling going to cost you? A switch?

[tecleandor]

Most expensive thing will be the switch, the cabling is not that expensive.

For a 10g card to work you'll need a pair of SFP+ transceivers, one for the card, and another one for the other element you're connecting to (a switch, a router, another computer...) This transceiver can be chosen for copper or fiber depending on your needs, and each transceiver will be from 50 to 100$. Then you buy fiber or copper Cat6a cable.

But, if your two devices are near (less than 10 meters), you can use a Twin Axial DAC (Direct Attach Cable) : you won't need the transceivers, you can just directly connect the two devices with this cable into the SFP+ port, and it's kind of cheap, for example, 12€ a 3meter run:

https://www.fs.com/en/products/40141.html?currency=EUR

[en4bz]

You can do physical loopback by connecting the two ports together. No switch required. A DAC cable is ~25USD.

[signa11]

> You can do physical loopback by connecting the two ports together.

this ! and this is waay better, because you can run all simulations (perf etc.) whatever on the same machine. for example, you can run client on 1 cpu-core, and server on another, and have packets looped over the physical interface.

simplify man simplify :)

[emmericp]

I'm not aware of any hypervisors that can emulate a 82599 (ixgbe) NIC.

I've a student who will start to work on a virtio driver soon to get a VM setup running.

[sigjuice]

If you have a system with an extra 82599 perhaps you can use it in a VM via PCIe passthrough?