Unlock 10M+ HTTP Connections per Second: dperf’s DPDK‑Powered Performance

dperf is Baidu's open‑source network performance and load testing tool built on DPDK, capable of generating tens of millions of HTTP connections per second, billions of concurrent requests, and hundreds of Gbps throughput.

Advantages

Powerful performance: Using a single x86 server, it can create tens of millions of HTTP connections per second and achieve hundreds of Gbps bandwidth.

Detailed statistics: Provides granular metrics and per‑packet loss detection.

Rich use cases: Suitable for L4 load‑balancer testing, cloud VM network testing, NIC and CPU packet‑processing benchmarks, and can act as a high‑performance HTTP server or client.

Performance Benchmarks

HTTP connections per second (CPS): 1 core client/server – 2.1 M CPS; 2 cores – 4 M CPS; 4 cores – 7 M CPS; 6 cores – 10 M CPS.

HTTP throughput: 1 core – 18 Gbps (RX/TX); 2 cores – 35 Gbps; 4 cores – 46 Gbps with ~43 % CPU usage.

Concurrent connections: 1 core – 100 M; 2 cores – 200 M; 4 cores – 400 M connections.

UDP TX packets per second (PPS): Scales from 15.96 MPPS on 1 core to 37.12 MPPS on 8 cores.

Test Environment

Memory: 512 GB (hugepages 100 GB)

NIC: Mellanox MT27710 25 Gbps × 2

Kernel: 4.19.90

Statistics Output

dperf outputs various metrics each second, including TPS, CPS, PPS, error counts at TCP/Socket/HTTP levels, packet loss, and retransmissions 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 Hugepages

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

Compile DPDK

# Enable required PMDs in 'config/common_base'
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

./build/dperf -c test/http/server-cps.conf   # listens on 6.6.241.27:80

Run client requests

ping 6.6.241.27
curl http://6.6.241.27/

Execute a test

Run the server configuration and then on another machine start the client:

# Server
./build/dperf -c test/http/server-cps.conf
# Client
./build/dperf -c test/http/client-cps.conf

Source code: https://github.com/baidu/dper