netmap - a novel framework for fast packet I/O

The high packet rates of today's high speed interfaces (up to 14.8Mpps on 10GigE interfaces) make it very difficult to do software packet processing at wire rate. An important reason is that the APIs and software architecture that we use is the same we had 20-30 years ago when "fast" was 1000 times slower. netmap integrates good ideas that were implemented (but separately) in past proposals into a novel, robust and easy to use framework for doing wire-speed packet I/O in user space. With netmap, it takes as little as 70-80 clock cycles to move one packet between the user program and the wire. As an example, a single core running at 1050 MHz can generate the 14.8 Mpps that saturate a 10GigE interface. The software is part of the FreeBSD operating syste