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I'm totally new to DPDK and have some weird questions that I cannot figure out by myself.

  1. Does DPDK require more than 1 NIC on my physical device? I saw some examples (l2fwd, l3fwd) that require 2 NICs, one is used for receiving packets and another one is used for transmitting packets.
  2. Since DPDK takes control of NICs, could I still normally access the Internet if I bind my only NIC to DPDK? I mean doing some normal stuff like surfing the web with Firefox.
  3. After binding the NICs, only DPDK applications can access those NICs, or is there any way that normal applications can access them?

I have been confused with these questions for days. Please purify my mind.

Thanks in advance :)

Hoang Do
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1 Answers1

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  1. It depends on the application. In case of l2fwd, yes you need more than 1 NIC. Though, they don't have to be physical. You could create virtual NICs with VmWare or VirtualBox.
  2. You won't be able to surf the web if you bind NIC to DPDK.
  3. I think there is no other way.

For development, you could setup a virtual machine, with 2 virtual NICs for use by DPDK, and one to surf the web.

Zhandos Zhylkaidar
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    You can modify l2fwd application to run for 1 NIC. For receiving and transmitting packets. – Fahad Naeem Dec 03 '16 at 19:35
  • Regarding question 3, some PMDs allow the system and other apps to access the interface through a so-called [bifurcated driver](http://doc.dpdk.org/guides/linux_gsg/linux_drivers.html#bifurcated-driver). Think thats specific for Mellanox devices only, though. It's definitely an option with the mlx5 PMD. Still, I guess it's unlikely OP would be using that. – AdamTL May 27 '20 at 14:56