why the performance of packet transmission is so low - c

Question

Trying to create a raw socket based program using mmap_packet to send packets at fast rate.
The following code is adopted from the example at this gist. It does send packets but it doesn't send it fast. On my 1Gbps nic (r8169 driver), it only sends at a rate of about 95,000 packets/second on my corei7 processor (3.1GHz). I believe it could have sent at much higher rate.
Not sure what is the bottleneck. Any ideas? Thanks!
Here is the code snippet:
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <assert.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <poll.h>
#include <arpa/inet.h>
#include <netinet/if_ether.h>
#include <sys/mman.h>
#include <sys/ioctl.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <linux/if.h>
#include <linux/if_packet.h>
#include <sys/time.h>
#define PACKET_QDISC_BYPASS 20
/// The number of frames in the ring
// This number is not set in stone. Nor are block_size, block_nr or frame_size
#define CONF_RING_FRAMES 1024
#define CONF_DEVICE "eth0"
/// Offset of data from start of frame
#define PKT_OFFSET (TPACKET_ALIGN(sizeof(struct tpacket_hdr)) + \
TPACKET_ALIGN(sizeof(struct sockaddr_ll)))
/// (unimportant) macro for loud failure
#define RETURN_ERROR(lvl, msg) \
do { \
fprintf(stderr, msg); \
return lvl; \
} while(0);
static struct sockaddr_ll txring_daddr;
double getTS() {
struct timeval tv;
gettimeofday(&tv, NULL);
return tv.tv_sec + tv.tv_usec/1000000.0;
}
/// create a linklayer destination address
// #param ringdev is a link layer device name, such as "eth0"
static int
init_ring_daddr(int fd, const char *ringdev)
{
struct ifreq ifreq;
// get device index
strcpy(ifreq.ifr_name, ringdev);
if (ioctl(fd, SIOCGIFINDEX, &ifreq)) {
perror("ioctl");
return -1;
}
txring_daddr.sll_family = AF_PACKET;
txring_daddr.sll_protocol = htons(ETH_P_IP);
txring_daddr.sll_ifindex = ifreq.ifr_ifindex;
// set the linklayer destination address
// NOTE: this should be a real address, not ff.ff....
txring_daddr.sll_halen = ETH_ALEN;
memset(&txring_daddr.sll_addr, 0xff, ETH_ALEN);
return 0;
}
/// Initialize a packet socket ring buffer
// #param ringtype is one of PACKET_RX_RING or PACKET_TX_RING
static char *
init_packetsock_ring(int fd, int ringtype)
{
struct tpacket_req tp;
char *ring;
// tell kernel to export data through mmap()ped ring
tp.tp_block_size = CONF_RING_FRAMES * getpagesize();
tp.tp_block_nr = 1;
tp.tp_frame_size = getpagesize();
tp.tp_frame_nr = CONF_RING_FRAMES;
if (setsockopt(fd, SOL_PACKET, ringtype, (void*) &tp, sizeof(tp))) {
perror("setting up ring");
RETURN_ERROR(NULL, "setsockopt() ring\n");
}
#ifdef TPACKET_V2
printf("it's TPACKET_V2\n");
val = TPACKET_V1;
setsockopt(fd, SOL_PACKET, PACKET_HDRLEN, &val, sizeof(val));
#endif
// open ring
ring = mmap(0, tp.tp_block_size * tp.tp_block_nr,
PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, fd, 0);
if (!ring)
RETURN_ERROR(NULL, "mmap()\n");
if (init_ring_daddr(fd, CONF_DEVICE))
return NULL;
return ring;
}
/// Create a packet socket. If param ring is not NULL, the buffer is mapped
// #param ring will, if set, point to the mapped ring on return
// #return the socket fd
static int
init_packetsock(char **ring, int ringtype)
{
int fd;
// open packet socket
//fd = socket(PF_PACKET, SOCK_DGRAM, htons(ETH_P_IP));
//fd = socket(AF_INET,SOCK_RAW,htons(ETH_P_ALL)); //ETH_P_ALL = 3
fd = socket(PF_PACKET, SOCK_RAW, htons(ETH_P_ALL));
if (fd < 0) {
perror("open socket");
RETURN_ERROR(-1, "Root priliveges are required\nsocket() rx. \n");
}
if (ring) {
*ring = init_packetsock_ring(fd, ringtype);
if (!*ring) {
close(fd);
return -1;
}
}
return fd;
}
static int
exit_packetsock(int fd, char *ring)
{
if (munmap(ring, CONF_RING_FRAMES * getpagesize())) {
perror("munmap");
return 1;
}
if (close(fd)) {
perror("close");
return 1;
}
return 0;
}
/// transmit a packet using packet ring
// NOTE: for high rate processing try to batch system calls,
// by writing multiple packets to the ring before calling send()
//
// #param pkt is a packet from the network layer up (e.g., IP)
// #return 0 on success, -1 on failure
static int process_tx(int fd, char *ring, const char *pkt, int pktlen)
{
static int ring_offset = 0;
struct tpacket_hdr *header;
struct pollfd pollset;
char *off;
int ret;
// fetch a frame
// like in the PACKET_RX_RING case, we define frames to be a page long,
// including their header. This explains the use of getpagesize().
header = (void *) ring + (ring_offset * getpagesize());
assert((((unsigned long) header) & (getpagesize() - 1)) == 0);
while (header->tp_status != TP_STATUS_AVAILABLE) {
// if none available: wait on more data
pollset.fd = fd;
pollset.events = POLLOUT;
pollset.revents = 0;
ret = poll(&pollset, 1, 1000 /* don't hang */);
if (ret < 0) {
if (errno != EINTR) {
perror("poll");
return -1;
}
//return 0;
}
}
// fill data
off = ((void *) header) + (TPACKET_HDRLEN - sizeof(struct sockaddr_ll));
memcpy(off, pkt, pktlen);
// fill header
header->tp_len = pktlen;
header->tp_status = TP_STATUS_SEND_REQUEST;
// increase consumer ring pointer
ring_offset = (ring_offset + 1) & (CONF_RING_FRAMES - 1);
// notify kernel
return 0;
}
/// Example application that opens a packet socket with rx_ring
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
char *ring;
char pkt[125] = {0x00,0x0c,0x29,0xa4,0xff,0xbc,0x40,0x25,0xc2,0xd9,0xfb,0x8c,0x08,0x00,0x45,0x00,0x00,0x6f,0x24,0x1b,0x40,0x00,0x40,0x06,0x02,0x4b,0x0a,0x00,0x00,0x07,0x0a,0x00,0x00,0x1d,0xb8,0x64,0x01,0xbb,0x80,0x9e,0xaa,0x77,0x17,0x6d,0xa2,0x04,0x80,0x18,0x00,0x73,0x03,0xa0,0x00,0x00,0x01,0x01,0x08,0x0a,0x01,0x27,0x8e,0xaf,0x00,0x01,0xe8,0x71,0x16,0x03,0x01,0x00,0x36,0x01,0x00,0x00,0x32,0x03,0x02,0x55,0xf5,0x01,0xa9,0xc0,0xca,0xae,0xd6,0xd2,0x9b,0x6a,0x79,0x6d,0x9a,0xe8,0x9d,0x78,0xe2,0x64,0x98,0xf0,0xac,0xcb,0x2c,0x0d,0x51,0xa5,0xf8,0xc4,0x0f,0x93,0x87,0x00,0x00,0x04,0x00,0x35,0x00,0xff,0x01,0x00,0x00,0x05,0x00,0x0f,0x00,0x01,0x01};
int fd;
printf("page size %x\n", getpagesize());
fd = init_packetsock(&ring, PACKET_TX_RING);
if (fd < 0)
return 1;
// TODO: make correct IP packet out of pkt
int i;
double startTs = getTS();
double currentTs;
int pktCnt = 0;
int sendCnt = 0;
while (1) {
for (i=0; i<1000; i++) {
pkt[1] ++; pktCnt++;
process_tx(fd, ring, pkt, 125);
}
if (sendto(fd, NULL, 0, 0, (void *) &txring_daddr, sizeof(txring_daddr)) < 0) {
perror("sendto");
return -1;
}
sendCnt++;
usleep(300);
currentTs = getTS();
if ((currentTs - startTs) >= 1.0) {
startTs += 1.0;
printf("%7d %6d\n", pktCnt, sendCnt);
pktCnt = 0; sendCnt = 0;
}
}
if (exit_packetsock(fd, ring))
return 1;
printf("OK\n");
return 0;
}
UPDATE1
The current NIC is RealTek RTL8111/8168/8411 NIC. After upgrading the driver to the version as of 8.044, the rate goes up to 135K/second.
Ran the same program on Intel 82577LM Gigabit NIC, got about 430K/seconds rate.