| VPP’s host stack leverages VPP’s graph based forwarding model and vectorized packet |
| processing to ensure high throughput and scale transport protocol termination. It |
| exposes apis that apart from allowing for efficient user-space app consumption and |
| generation of data, also enables highly efficient local inter-app communication. |
| At a high level VPP’s host stack consists of 3 major components: |
| * A session layer that facilitates interaction between transport protocols and applications |
| * Pluggable transport protocols, including TCP, QUIC, TLS, UDP |
| * VCL (VPPComs library) a set of libraries meant to ease the consumability of the stack from application perspective |
| All of these components were custom built to fit within VPP’s architecture and to |
| leverage its speed. As a result, a significant amount of effort was invested into: |
| * building a transport pluggable session layer that abstracts the interaction between applications and transports using a custom-built shared memory infrastructure. Notably, this also allows for transport protocols that are typically implemented in applications, like QUIC and TLS, to be implemented within VPP. |
| * a clean slate TCP implementation that supports vectorized packet processing and follows VPP’s highly scalable threading model. The implementation is RFC compliant, supports a high number of high-speed TCP protocol features and it was validated using Defensic’s Codenomicon 1M+ tests suite. |
| * VCL, a library that emulates traditional asynchronous communication functions in user-space, all while allowing for new patterns to be developed, if needed. |
| * implementing a high performance “cut-through” communication mode that enables applications attached to vpp to transparently exchange data over shared memory without incurring the extra cost of a traditional transport protocol. Testing has shown this to be much more efficient than traditional inter-container networking. |
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