High-speed network traffic capturing and processing tools

Network stacks currently implemented in operating systems can no longer cope with the packet rates offered by 10 Gbit Ethernet. Thus, frameworks were developed claiming to offer a faster alternative for this demand. These frameworks enable arbitrary packet processing systems to be built from commodity hardware handling a traffic rate of several 10 Gbit interfaces, entering a domain previously only available to custom-built hardware. In this paper, we survey various frameworks for high-performance packet IO and their interaction with a modular frameworks and specialized virtual network functions software for high-speed packet processing. We introduce a model to estimate and assess the performance of these packet processing frameworks. Moreover, we analyze the performance of the most prominent frameworks based on representative measurements in packet capturing scenarios. Therefore, we provide a comparison between them and select the area of applicability.