Question XDP-ON-NIC firewalling on NIC - where to look for cheap-ish options and what can it do?

[Darryl_Fallon_222]

XDP as in running the eBPF programs per each Ethernet frame received on the NIC, instead on the host.

First one to offer that was Netronome, but now it is kind of old.
I'm told that cheapest available somewhat contemporary options are Connect-X5 and up, but that there are some limitations and that BlueField-2 and up smartNICs have much more complete implementation.

But BlueFields are WAY more expensive, even used, and only cheap-ish Chinese channels actually offer engineering samples with DPU part disabled in firmware.

So it seems that leaves on the table Broadcoms (that are rarely available even on e-bay) and ConnectX.

Within that context, what can those really do ? Do they have real CPU or just some optimized-but-dumb state machine ?

How complex program can it run and can it do it at maximal packet throughput at say 200GbE or less ?

Is there more info on that ?

 

[bill001g]

Not sure how many people on this forum would even know what those devices are. This is something that has a somewhat limited use in even very large data centers. I have seen these devices but they are more of a server thing than a true network devices so I have no experience.

Why do you need to buy these. If it is learning and experimenting I suspect there are some kind of emulators that of course do not perform as fast but they let you learn how to write the programs these device need.

In general if you really need a device like this you already have massive investment in other equipment and a extra $10,000 here or there makes no difference to you.

I do not know about these devices but companies that sell stuff like this do everything they can to kill off any kind of used/ unauthorized market. I know cisco for example pretty much has most there equipment now days rigged that you can not really use all the features without paying yearly maintenance contracts and they do not allow equipment acquired from third party channels to be put on maintenance.

 

[cruisetung]

eBPF/XDP hardware offload to SmartNICs
https://netdevconf.org/1.2/session.html?jakub-kicinski

eBPF XDP

Learn how XDP enables fast traffic processing in eBPF, see use cases of XDP, and learn to write and load your first XDP program.

www.tigera.io

However my personal opinion is that OP should just find a data center job where you can access those equipment instead asking similar questions over and over where to buy them on the cheap.