We're pretty much the opposite of DPDK. Rather than moving stuff out of the kernel, we move stuff into it. We're actually moving stuff like TLS encryption into the kernel -- see our kernel TLS papers at AsiaBSDCon

We do all of our stack "traditionally", in the kernel, whereas DPDK moves things into userspace. By using a traditional stack with async sendfile in the kernel, we benefit from the VM page cache, and reduce IO requirements at peak capacity. There are no memory to memory copies, very little kernel/user boundary crossing, and no AIO. Using single-socket Intel Xeon E5-2697A v4, we serve at 90Gb/s using roughly 35-50% CPU (which will increase as more and more clients adopt HTTPS streaming).

There is no question that FreeBSD is lacking in a number of areas. For example, device support is a constant struggle.

Just wondering, what kind of things do you think FreeBSD is lacking in?

Regardless of those things, the OpenConnect boxes are doing a pretty small subset of possible server tasks, it's basically serving static content from disk, and updating the static content occasionally. This is a task that FreeBSD has been excelling at, since basically forever. FreeBSD is a pretty stable target to tweak on as well, Netflix moved TLS bulk encryption into sendfile(), which helps avoid the transitions from kernel to user space, but by putting more stuff in kernel space, rather than the DPDK method of putting more stuff in user space. They've continued to tweak sendfile, which I imagine helped them get up to nearly 100Gbps out.

I haven't had the pleasure of running 100G network, but I had to do very little tuning to saturate 10G with FreeBSD on http download site, and TLS cpu was the primary thing holding me back when moving it to https. Bulk download was moved away from my team before I got new servers with 2x10G and fancier processors, so I was never able to see if I could saturate that too :(

100G, probably not unless you are extremely wealthy and you have a burning desire to be destitute. 40G is definitely doable for a homelab. Used 40Gbe adapters are roughly $200 and DAC cables are < $100. QSPF+ Switches are much harder to find used and/or cheap though. This means that p2p solutions or ring networks are generally preferred unless you are wealthy. If you want fiber, which you don't need for a homelab, you pay the prices listed above.

Agree with other commenters, not sure what the 2.5x increase in traffic would open for you in a home setting. I use 40gb fiber between switches on opposite ends of my place and 10gb connections between switch and computers and I've always found something else to be my bottleneck, not the internal network itself. I can saturate my wifi network easily though (I've got a $20k retail Aruba wifi network, yet still not enough). I buy most of my gear used so it's not that expensive (would've been very expensive retail), but still overkill unless your a network nerd (like me) or are doing something out of your home you likely should be using a DC.

Linux can route traffic over 40G on regular hardware as long as packet sizes are fairly large >~150 bytes. I would guess that serving static assets from ram would be able to saturate that on a single machine

> trying to add artificial latency intra DC with enormous coils of fiber.

Do people really do this?! (I don't have DC experience, serious question)