volt-vmm/benchmarks/results-template.md

Volt Network Benchmark Results

Test Environment

Parameter	Value
Date	YYYY-MM-DD
Host CPU	Intel Xeon E-2288G @ 3.70GHz
Host RAM	64GB DDR4-2666
Host NIC	Intel X710 10GbE
Host Kernel	6.1.0-xx-amd64
VM vCPUs	4
VM RAM	8GB
Guest Kernel	6.1.0-xx-amd64
QEMU Version	8.x.x

Test Configuration

• Duration: 30 seconds per test
• Ping count: 1000 packets
• iperf3 parallel streams: 8 (multi-stream tests)

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Results

Throughput (Gbps)

Test	virtio	vhost-net	macvtap
TCP Single Stream
TCP Multi-8 Stream
UDP Maximum
TCP Reverse

Latency (microseconds)

Metric	virtio	vhost-net	macvtap
ICMP P50
ICMP P95
ICMP P99
TCP P50
TCP P99

Packets Per Second

Packet Size	virtio	vhost-net	macvtap
64 bytes
128 bytes
256 bytes
512 bytes

Transaction Rates (trans/sec)

Test	virtio	vhost-net	macvtap
TCP_RR
TCP_CRR
UDP_RR

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Analysis

Throughput Analysis

TCP Single Stream:

• virtio: X Gbps (baseline)
• vhost-net: X Gbps (Y% improvement)
• macvtap: X Gbps (Y% improvement)

Key Finding: [Describe the performance differences]

Latency Analysis

P99 Latency:

• virtio: X µs
• vhost-net: X µs
• macvtap: X µs

Jitter (P99/P50 ratio):

• virtio: X.Xx
• vhost-net: X.Xx
• macvtap: X.Xx

Key Finding: [Describe latency characteristics]

PPS Analysis

64-byte Packets (best overhead indicator):

• virtio: X pps
• vhost-net: X pps (Y% improvement)
• macvtap: X pps (Y% improvement)

Key Finding: [Describe per-packet overhead differences]

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Conclusions

Performance Hierarchy

1. macvtap - Best for:

   • Maximum throughput requirements
   • Lowest latency needs
   • When host NIC can be dedicated

2. vhost-net - Best for:

   • Multi-tenant environments
   • Good balance of performance and flexibility
   • Standard production workloads

3. virtio - Best for:

   • Development/testing
   • Maximum portability
   • When performance is not critical

Recommendations

For Volt production VMs:

• Default: vhost-net (best balance)
• High-performance option: macvtap (when applicable)
• Compatibility fallback: virtio

Anomalies or Issues

[Document any unexpected results, test failures, or areas needing investigation]

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Raw Data

Full test results available in:

• results/virtio/TIMESTAMP/
• results/vhost-net/TIMESTAMP/
• results/macvtap/TIMESTAMP/

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Reproducibility

To reproduce these results:

# On server VM
iperf3 -s -D
sockperf sr --daemonize
netserver

# On client VM (for each backend)
./run-all.sh <server-ip> virtio
./run-all.sh <server-ip> vhost-net  
./run-all.sh <server-ip> macvtap

# Generate comparison
./compare.sh results/

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Report generated by Volt Benchmark Suite