[lrizzo]

netsend and other apps used in that comparison were not rate limited. Surely that test only measures system's overheads, but i put that disclaimer very clearly in all papers and talks (btw "which it isn't" suggests that you have different numbers so please let us know). Surely, sometimes these per-packet savings are irrelevant, but there are a number of use cases where this kind of savings matter a lot. This is true for netmap, dpdk, DNA and all other network-stack-bypass frameworks.

On passing, people typically use the term 'os-bypass' but netmap relies on the OS for protection, synchronization, memory management etc -- all things that the OS does well and i find no reason to reinvent.

[personZ]

Unless you used a specialized, customized version of netsend, yes it was rate limited -- it by default waits on the clock interval, and warns you if you try to call it in defiance of that. Further it is endlessly calculating the time and calling system functions to get the time.

As a test of max throughput, it is a horrible test. I don't have the motivation to prove it, but I would be surprised if more than 5% of the CPU load actually went towards networking, the rest time calculations and interval tests.