Reference

Hardware reference for osvbng deployments: dataplane modes, supported NICs, validated server designs, and per-vendor caveats.

Dataplane modes

Mode	Performance	Use case	NIC requirement
DPDK	Line-rate	Production, high-throughput	Supported NICs (see vendor matrix below)
AF_XDP	High	Production, simpler setup	Any XDP-capable NIC (coming soon)
AF_PACKET	Standard	Development, any NIC	Any Linux NIC

DPDK

Recommended for production. Vendor-specific driver binding strategy (see matrix below). Configure devices in osvbng.yaml:

dataplane:
  dpdk:
    devices:
      - pci: "0000:05:00.0"
        name: eth1
      - pci: "0000:06:00.0"
        name: eth2

AF_XDP (coming soon)

eBPF/XDP for high performance while keeping interfaces visible in Linux. Right pick where DPDK driver binding is impractical.

AF_PACKET

Works with any Linux NIC. For development and testing.

Vendor support matrix

Vendor	Supported families	Driver strategy	Linux visibility	Notes
Mellanox / NVIDIA	ConnectX-4, 5, 6, 7	Bifurcated (mlx5)	Yes	Recommended for production. No guest IOMMU required in VMs.
Intel X710 family	X710, XXV710, XL710	vfio-pci (i40e)	No (after bind)	Requires intel_iommu=on iommu=pt. ~37 Mpps small-packet ceiling.
Intel E810	E810-CQDA2, E810-XXV	vfio-pci (ice)	No (after bind)	Requires IOMMU. DDP profile for protocol-aware features.
Other	—	vfio-pci (fallback)	No	Adding a vendor: see Adding vendor support.

Hardware matrix

Validated server designs with measured throughput and subscriber counts: see Hardware Matrix.

Per-NIC reference

Hardware specs, throughput limits, firmware/kernel requirements, and known caveats per NIC family: see NICs.

Bind strategies

Bifurcated

Kernel driver stays bound; DPDK PMD accesses hardware via the Verbs API. Used by Mellanox.

• Data plane is fully DPDK
• Control plane (link state, ethtool, firmware) shared with kernel
• Linux interface visible but should be unconfigured (no IP)
• Works in VMs with PCI passthrough; no guest IOMMU required

vfio-pci

Device unbound from the kernel and bound to vfio-pci for exclusive DPDK ownership. Used by Intel and most other vendors as the default.

• Requires IOMMU enabled (intel_iommu=on iommu=pt)
• Device disappears from Linux after bind
• Not suitable for VMs without nested IOMMU

uio_pci_generic

Fallback when vfio-pci is unavailable.

• No IOMMU required
• Less secure (no DMA protection)

Troubleshooting

Device not appearing in dataplane. Check the driver binding:

ls -la /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:XX:00.0/driver

Mellanox should show mlx5_core. Intel and other vfio-bound devices should show vfio-pci.

vfio-pci bind fails with EINVAL (-22). IOMMU not available. Either:

1. Enable IOMMU in BIOS and kernel (intel_iommu=on)
2. Use noiommu mode (less secure): echo 1 > /sys/module/vfio/parameters/enable_unsafe_noiommu_mode
3. Use uio_pci_generic instead

Mellanox device not working. Verify packages and kernel module:

apt install rdma-core libibverbs-dev
lsmod | grep mlx5