This method of benchmarking the underlying hardware, NICs and OS is nowadays deprecated with the modern multithreading packet scheduler of BalanceNG. With the current release of BalanceNG, you are able to reach maximum speed even on 10GBit network interfaces. For further information please consult the “Performance + Measurements” chapter in the online manual.
This is our collection of historic BalanceNG Benchmark results using the default benchmark parameters (a packetsize of 1514, a window size of 16 and a duration of 300 seconds).
This BalanceNG benchmark was intended to measure the maximum performance which a platform is able to deliver (with all it’s components: Operating system, interfaces and switches). Actually, load balancing itself is not measured by this and happens on top of the basic “switching engine” of BalanceNG.
| BalanceNG Hardware and OS Platform | Packets/Second | Bytes/Second |
|---|---|---|
| Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, virtual cross cable with 4 threads per interface, cross cable instance on the same machine, veth0 and veth1 interfaces | 154813 | 234387543 |
| Supermicro 1HU system, SMC GBit-Switch, bond0 and bond1 bonding interfaces | 81177 | 122902442 |
| Sun X2100, single core AMD, Solaris 10, bge0 nge0 Gigabit Interfaces, Netgear Gigabit Ethernet Switch | 69130 | 104664314 |
| Supermicro 1HU system, CAT6 cross cable between eth2 and eth3 | 64020 | 96926290 |
| Sun Blade X6250, Red-Hat AS4, eth0-eth1, Cisco 3560G Switch (VLAN) | 64000 | 96896918 |
| Sun-Fire V240, Solaris 10 6/06, bge3 bge1 Gigabit Interfaces, cross cable | 37400 | 56623772 |
| Pentium 4 2GHz, Linux 2.6 Kernel, 2 Intel Pro/1000 on same PCI Bus, Netgear Gigabit Ethernet Switch | 35251 | 53370993 |
| Sun-Fire V240, Solaris 10 6/06, bge3 bge2 Gigabit Interfaces, cross cable | 28476 | 43113350 |
| Sun Blade X6250, Solaris 10, cross cable e1000g1-nxge0 | 18324 | 27743132 |
| Sun-Fire T2000, Solaris 10 6/06, ipge1 ipge2 Gigabit Interfaces, cross cable | 18156 | 27488356 |
| Fujitsu/Siemens PrimePower 250, Solaris 10 (SPARC), fjgi1/2 Interfaces, cross cable | 16340 | 24739714 |
| BalanceNG Hardware and OS Platform | Packets/Second | Bytes/Second |
|---|---|---|
| Sun Blade X6250, Solaris 10, e1000g0 e1000g1, 100MBit-Interface on Cisco 3560g/3560 VLAN | 8047 | 12184213 |
| Fujitsu/Siemens PrimePower 250, Solaris 10 (SPARC), fjqe0/1 Interfaces, cross cable | 7851 | 11887166 |
| VIA Esther processor 1500MHz with 1Gig ram 3002.91 bogomips on a linux 2.6.17-2-686 (debian) kernel, eth0 (VIA Rhine II) & eth6 (RealTek RTL8139) | 7540 | 11416817 |
| VIA EK10000 1GHz, Linux 2.4 Kernel (Devil-Linux), 2 on-board 100MBit, Netgear Ethernet Switch | 7217 | 10927875 |
| VIA PD10000 1GHz, Linux 2.4 Kernel (Devil-Linux), 2 on-board 100MBit, Netgear Ethernet Switch | 7046 | 10668179 |
| Sun Netra T1, Solaris 9, hme0 and hme1 interfaces, Linksys switches | 6103 | 9240331 |
| SUN X1, 550MHz, Solaris 10 3/05, dfme1 / dfme0 interfaces, Two Cisco Fast Ethernet Switches (connected with Gigabit) | 6025 | 9122592 |
| Soekris net4801, 266 Mhz SC1100 processor, 128M ram, National Semiconductor 100M eth1/2, Netgear 8 port 100M switch | 2406 | 3643451 |
Connect two physical interfaces of the machine to the same switch. Two separate interfaces are required for the BalanceNG “benchmark” command.
The “bng” executable may be directly executed from the directory created by extracting the compressed distribution archive. On Solaris systems the “bngfilt” STREAMS module needs to be installed, take a look at the README file in the bngfilt-binaries directory of the distribution. Note: A reboot of the operating system is not necessary.
Attach the interfaces and start the benchmark like this (Licensing not required, replace “eth0” and “eth1” by your interface names and don’t forget to load the “benchmark” module):
# ./bng start
BalanceNG: starting up ...
# ./bng control
BalanceNG: connected to PID 7895
bng# module benchmark
bng# interface eth0
interface eth0 successfully attached
bng# interface eth1
interface eth1 successfully attached
bng# benchmark eth0 eth1
bng# show benchmark
benchmark active and running:
duration (seconds) : 300
packetsize : 1514
window size : 16
packets sent : 397266
packets received : 397250
seconds remaining : 289
bng#
bng# show benchmark benchmark finished with the following results: duration (seconds) : 300 packetsize : 1514 window size : 16 packets sent : 10463134 packets received : 10463118 lost packets : 0 packets per second : 34877 bytes per second : 52803869 bng#