Re:OpenBSD Router Guide (2020)
by candl on Monday August 02, 2021 @10:22AM
(#28036880)
Is OpenBSD still largely single-threaded or have there been SMP improvements in the network stack over the years?
The feature set OpenBSD has is impressive, but is there a large gap in networking perf compared to Linux/FreeBSD?
[ Parent
| on HN ]
From my $work computer:
$ uname -a
OpenBSD XXXXX 6.9 GENERIC.MP#3 amd64
$top
load averages: 0.83, 0.62, 0.44
94 processes: 93 idle, 1 on processor
CPU00 states: 0.5% user, 0.0% nice, 0.2% sys, 0.3% spin, 0.6% intr, 98.4% idle
CPU02 states: 6.5% user, 0.0% nice, 1.9% sys, 0.4% spin, 0.0% intr, 91.1% idle
CPU04 states: 4.9% user, 0.0% nice, 1.6% sys, 0.3% spin, 0.0% intr, 93.1% idle
CPU06 states: 4.0% user, 0.0% nice, 1.1% sys, 0.3% spin, 0.0% intr, 94.6% idle
CPU08 states: 1.4% user, 0.0% nice, 0.6% sys, 0.2% spin, 0.0% intr, 97.8% idle
CPU10 states: 1.4% user, 0.0% nice, 0.5% sys, 0.2% spin, 0.0% intr, 98.0% idle
CPU12 states: 0.6% user, 0.0% nice, 0.3% sys, 0.1% spin, 0.0% intr, 99.0% idle
CPU14 states: 0.7% user, 0.0% nice, 0.3% sys, 0.1% spin, 0.0% intr, 98.8% idle
Memory: Real: 3292M/5988M act/tot Free: 9109M Cache: 1692M Swap: 0K/15GThe person you're responding to was asking about network performance. I imagine specifically regarding pf (packet filter, the firewall component).
To the grandparent: PF is still single threaded. If you had performance issues with that before you may still have them, but CPU improvements over time may have negated that impact. It's worth trying it out again.