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+.. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
+.. (c) Cisco Systems, Inc
+
+Features
+********
+
+Data Plane Performance Measurement Features
+-------------------------------------------
+
+NFVbench supports the following main measurement capabilities:
+
+- supports 2 measurement modes:
+    - *fixed rate* mode to generate traffic at a fixed rate for a fixed duration
+    - NDR (No Drop Rate) and PDR (Partial Drop Rate) measurement mode
+- configurable frame sizes (any list of fixed sizes or 'IMIX')
+- built-in packet paths
+- built-in loopback VNFs based on fast L2 or L3 forwarders running in VMs
+- configurable number of flows and service chains
+- configurable traffic direction (single or bi-directional)
+
+
+NDR is the highest throughput achieved without dropping packets.
+PDR is the highest throughput achieved without dropping more than a pre-set limit (called PDR threshold or allowance, expressed in %).
+
+Results of each run include the following data:
+
+- Aggregated achieved throughput in bps
+- Aggregated achieved packet rate in pps (or fps)
+- Actual drop rate in %
+- Latency in usec (min, max, average in the current version)
+
+Built-in OpenStack support
+--------------------------
+NFVbench can stage OpenStack resources to build 1 or more service chains using direct OpenStack APIs. Each service chain is composed of:
+
+- 1 or 2 loopback VM instances per service chain
+- 2 Neutron networks per loopback VM
+
+OpenStack resources are staged before traffic is measured using OpenStack APIs (Nova and Neutron) then disposed after completion of measurements.
+
+The loopback VM flavor to use can be configured in the NFVbench configuration file.
+
+Note that NFVbench does not use OpenStack Heat nor any higher level service (VNFM or NFVO) to create the service chains because its
+main purpose is to measure the performance of the NFVi infrastructure which is mainly focused on L2 forwarding performance.
+
+External Chains
+---------------
+NFVbench also supports settings that involve externally staged packet paths with or without OpenStack:
+
+- run benchmarks on existing service chains at the L3 level that are staged externally by any other tool (e.g. any VNF capable of L3 routing)
+- run benchmarks on existing L2 chains that are configured externally (e.g. pure L2 forwarder such as DPDK testpmd)
+
+
+Traffic Generation
+------------------
+
+NFVbench currently integrates with the open source TRex traffic generator:
+
+- `TRex <https://trex-tgn.cisco.com>`_ (pre-built into the NFVbench container)
+
+
+Supported Packet Paths
+----------------------
+Packet paths describe where packets are flowing in the NFVi platform. The most commonly used paths are identified by 3 or 4 letter abbreviations.
+A packet path can generally describe the flow of packets associated to one or more service chains, with each service chain composed of 1 or more VNFs.
+
+The following packet paths are currently supported by NFVbench:
+
+- PVP (Physical interface to VM to Physical interface)
+- PVVP (Physical interface to VM to VM to Physical interface)
+- N*PVP (N concurrent PVP packet paths)
+- N*PVVP (N concurrent PVVP packet paths)
+
+The traffic is made of 1 or more flows of L3 frames (UDP packets) with different payload sizes. Each flow is identified by a unique source and destination MAC/IP tuple.
+
+
+Loopback VM
+^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+NFVbench provides a loopback VM image that runs CentOS with 2 pre-installed forwarders:
+
+- DPDK testpmd configured to do L2 cross connect between 2 virtual interfaces
+- FD.io VPP configured to perform L3 routing between 2 virtual interfaces
+
+Frames are just forwarded from one interface to the other.
+In the case of testpmd, the source and destination MAC are rewritten, which corresponds to the mac forwarding mode (--forward-mode=mac).
+In the case of VPP, VPP will act as a real L3 router, and the packets are routed from one port to the other using static routes.
+
+Which forwarder and what Nova flavor to use can be selected in the NFVbench configuration. Be default the DPDK testpmd forwarder is used with 2 vCPU per VM.
+The configuration of these forwarders (such as MAC rewrite configuration or static route configuration) is managed by NFVbench.
+
+
+PVP Packet Path
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+This packet path represents a single service chain with 1 loopback VNF and 2 Neutron networks:
+
+.. image:: images/nfvbench-pvp.svg
+
+
+PVVP Packet Path
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+This packet path represents a single service chain with 2 loopback VNFs in sequence and 3 Neutron networks.
+The 2 VNFs can run on the same compute node (PVVP intra-node):
+
+.. image:: images/nfvbench-pvvp-intra.svg
+
+or on different compute nodes (PVVP inter-node) based on a configuration option:
+
+.. image:: images/nfvbench-pvvp-inter.svg
+
+
+
+Multi-Chaining (N*PVP or N*PVVP)
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+Multiple service chains can be setup by NFVbench without any limit on the concurrency (other than limits imposed by available resources on compute nodes).
+In the case of multiple service chains, NFVbench will instruct the traffic generator to use multiple L3 packet streams (frames directed to each path will have a unique destination MAC address).
+
+Example of multi-chaining with 2 concurrent PVP service chains:
+
+.. image:: images/nfvbench-npvp.svg
+
+This innovative feature will allow to measure easily the performance of a fully loaded compute node running multiple service chains.
+
+Multi-chaining is currently limited to 1 compute node (PVP or PVVP intra-node) or 2 compute nodes (for PVVP inter-node).
+The 2 edge interfaces for all service chains will share the same 2 networks.
+
+
+Other Misc Packet Paths
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+P2P (Physical interface to Physical interface - no VM) can be supported using the external chain/L2 forwarding mode.
+
+V2V (VM to VM) is not supported but PVVP provides a more complete (and mroe realistic) alternative.
+
+
+Supported Neutron Network Plugins and vswitches
+-----------------------------------------------
+
+Any Virtual Switch, Any Encapsulation
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+NFVbench is agnostic of the virtual switch implementation and has been tested with the following virtual switches:
+
+- ML2/VPP/VLAN (networking-vpp)
+- OVS/VLAN and OVS-DPDK/VLAN
+- ML2/ODL/VPP (OPNFV Fast Data Stack)
+
+SR-IOV
+^^^^^^
+
+By default, service chains will be based on virtual switch interfaces.
+
+NFVbench provides an option to select SR-IOV based virtual interfaces instead (thus bypassing any virtual switch) for those OpenStack system that include and support SR-IOV capable NICs on compute nodes.
+
+
+
+
+
+