Table of Content


Device Specification

Device Model Operating System Memory Processor
BITBOX EXA ZEN 5000 2G-2S-2CQ Debian 12.5 64 AMD Ryzen 9 5950x
BITBOX EXA EVO A7500-2G-4S+2CQ Ubuntu 22.04 64 AMD EPYC 7542

Setup Prerequisite

Important Packages

The important packages that must be installed before building the VPP

sudo apt install make cpufrequtils git

Additional Packages

The additional packages

sudo apt install htop net-tools ipmitool lshw rsync traceroute snmpd snmp traceroute mtr

Governor Mode

Enable the performance mode can make VPP build process more faster

sudo echo 'GOVERNOR="performance"' > /etc/default/cpufrequtils
sudo systemctl enable cpufrequtils
sudo systemctl start cpufrequtils
sudo systemctl reboot

Binding NIC to DPDK-Compatible Drivers

Before DPDK or VPP can fully take control of our NICs, we need to detach them from the Linux kernel’s default network drivers and bind them to user-space drivers like vfio-pci or uio_pci_generic. This step is essential for enabling zero-copy packet processing and achieving the high performance DPDK is known for.

Before we proceed, it's important to have a basic understanding of what DPDK is a set of libraries and drivers designed to enable fast packet processing in user space, bypassing the kernel's networking stack.