dperf: A DPDK‑Based 100Gbps Network Performance and Load Testing Tool

dperf is a network performance and load testing software built on DPDK, capable of generating up to ten‑million‑plus HTTP connections per second, billions of concurrent requests, and hundreds of Gbps of throughput on a single x86 server.

Advantages

Powerful performance: millions of HTTP CPS, hundreds of Gbps bandwidth, billions of concurrent connections.

Detailed statistics: per‑packet loss, PPS, TCP/Socket/HTTP error counts, retransmissions, etc.

Rich use cases: 4‑layer load‑balancer stress testing, cloud VM network testing, NIC and CPU packet‑processing benchmarking, high‑performance HTTP server/client.

Performance

HTTP Connections per Second (CPS)

Client Cores

Server Cores

HTTP CPS

1

1

2,101,044

2

2

4,000,423

4

4

7,010,743

6

6

10,027,172

HTTP Throughput

Client Cores

Server Cores

RX (Gbps)

TX (Gbps)

Client CPU %

Server CPU %

1

1

18

18

60

59

2

2

35

35

60

59

4

4

46

46

43

43

HTTP Concurrent Connections

Client Cores

Server Cores

Current Connections

Client CPU %

Server CPU %

1

1

100,000,000

34

39

2

2

200,000,000

36

39

4

4

400,000,000

40

41

UDP TX PPS

Client Cores

TX MPPS

Client CPU %

1

15.96

95

2

29.95

95

4

34.92

67

6

35.92

54

8

37.12

22

Test Environment Configuration

Memory: 512 GB (huge pages 100 GB)

NIC: Mellanox MT27710 25 Gbps × 2

Kernel: 4.19.90

Statistics Collected

dperf outputs per‑second statistics such as TPS, CPS, various PPS dimensions, TCP/Socket/HTTP error counts, packet loss, and retransmission counts classified by TCP flags.

seconds 22                 cpuUsage 52
pktRx   3,001,058          pktTx    3,001,025          bitsRx   2,272,799,040      bitsTx  1,920,657,600      dropTx  0
arpRx   0                  arpTx    0                  icmpRx   0                  icmpTx  0                  otherRx 0          badRx 0
synRx   1,000,345          synTx    1,000,330          finRx    1,000,350          finTx   1,000,350          rstRx   0          rstTx 0
synRt   0                  finRt    0                  ackRt    0                  pushRt  0                  tcpDrop 0
skOpen  1,000,330          skClose  1,000,363          skCon    230                skErr   0
httpGet 1,000,345          http2XX  1,000,350          httpErr  0
ierrors 0                  oerrors  0                  imissed  0

Getting Started

Configure Huge Pages

# Edit '/boot/grub2/grub.cfg' and add:
linux16 /vmlinuz-... nopku transparent_hugepage=never default_hugepagesz=1G hugepagesz=1G hugepages=8
# Reboot the OS

Compile DPDK

# Enable the required PMD in 'config/common_base'
# Example for Mellanox CX4/CX5:
# CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_MLX5_PMD=y
TARGET=x86_64-native-linuxapp-gcc   # or arm64-armv8a-linuxapp-gcc
cd /root/dpdk/dpdk-stable-19.11.10
make install T=$TARGET -j16

Compile dperf

cd dperf
make -j8 RTE_SDK=/root/dpdk/dpdk-stable-19.11.10 RTE_TARGET=$TARGET

Bind NIC

# Skip for Mellanox NICs
modprobe uio
modprobe uio_pci_generic
/root/dpdk/dpdk-stable-19.11.10/usertools/dpdk-devbind.py -b uio_pci_generic 0000:1b:00.0

Start dperf Server

# Listen on 6.6.241.27:80, gateway 6.6.241.1
./build/dperf -c test/http/server-cps.conf

Send Requests from Client

# Ensure client IP is within the 'client' range in the config
ping 6.6.241.27
curl http://6.6.241.27/

Run a Test

On the client machine, execute:

./build/dperf -c test/http/client-cps.conf

Open‑Source Repository

https://github.com/baidu/dperf