Why Does Flow Director Cause Packet Reordering?

Journal Article · Sun Aug 01 04:00:00 EDT 2010 · IEEE Commun.Lett.

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/LCOMM.2011.122010.102022· OSTI ID:2520511

Wu, Wenji ^[1]; DeMar, Phil ^[1]; Crawford, Matt ^[1]

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1. Fermilab

Intel Ethernet Flow Director is an advanced network interface card (NIC) technology. It provides the benefits of parallel receive processing in multiprocessing environments and can automatically steer incoming network data to the same core on which its application process resides. However, our analysis and experiments show that Flow Director cannot guarantee in-order packet delivery in multiprocessing environments. Packet reordering causes various negative impacts. E.g., TCP performs poorly with severe packet reordering. In this paper, we use a simplified model to analyze why Flow Director can cause packet reordering. Our experiments verify our analysis.

• Research Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP) (SC-25)
• DOE Contract Number: 89243024CSC000002
• OSTI ID: 2520511
• Report Number(s): FERMILAB-PUB-10-309-CD; arXiv:1106.0443; oai:inspirehep.net:868208
• Journal Information: IEEE Commun.Lett., Journal Name: IEEE Commun.Lett. Vol. 15
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English