poor performance whit small packets !

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Wi find a big problem with small UDP packets.
wi try to send a 64byte (-l 64b) packet stream with Iperf and can’t obtain an accetable througput. We have measured max 8.000 Packet/sec and maximum transfer at 6Mbps :frowning: .
Alvarion BrezzeAccess VL v.4 have 40.000 packets/sec and 20Mbps in the same condition :open_mouth: .
I used Iperf with following strings:
server: Iperf -s -u -i 1 -w 128k -l 64b
client: Iperf -c 192.168.x.x -i 1 -w 128k - l 64b -b 10m

where 10m is the stream, and can change to obtain minimum packet loss.
Alvarion support -b 20m
Also with packet size of 128 or 200 the problem persist.
This is big problem for VoIP !!!

Bye
Cuccio

2

What kind of hardware are you using with mikrotik? A 532 isn’t powerful enough for that pps i dont think.

Sam

3

trying packing the tiny packets together with mikrotik packet packing protocol(m3p); i have yet to use this but it seems promising.

also i beleive nstreme does this by default, were you using nstreme or wds?

4

I just tested and we see the same thing. One link is NStreme2 and the other is NStreme w/WDS. Both show horrible performance with small UDP packets. TCP packets of the same size fly through at near full speed.

5

huh, anyone tried with m3p? does it max the cpu? as in, is it a cpu problem or radio/protocol limitation?

6

I don’t see how M3P is going to help when transmitting 64byte packets works fine with TCP but not with UDP. M3P only mentions packet size and not UDP or TCP.

7

ya, i dont know, never used it.

does it appear to be a cpu limitation then?

8

we have tested 13000-23000 pps on Rb532, with/without connection tracking respectively. m3p will not improve situation. check you testing methods, configuration, setup and connections.

9

Have you tested with both UDP and TCP? Our setup is as follows:

1 GHz MT Router → RB532 w/WDS → RB532 w/WDS → 1 GHz MT Router

We run the test between the 1 GHz routers using the Mikrotik bandwidth test.

/tool bandwidth-test XX.XX.XX.XX protocol=tcp local-tx-size=64 remote-tx-size=64 direction=transmit random-data=yes user=admin duration=5s

status: done testing
duration: 5s
tx-current: 15.6Mbps
tx-10-second-average: 16.4Mbps
tx-total-average: 16.4Mbps
random-data: yes
direction: transmit

Exact same test just changing to UDP:

tool bandwidth-test XX.XX.XX.XX protocol=udp local-tx-size=64 remote-tx-size=64 direction=transmit random-data=yes user=admin duration=5s

status: done testing
duration: 6s
tx-current: 2.0Mbps
tx-10-second-average: 1416.3kbps
tx-total-average: 1416.3kbps
random-data: yes
direction: transmit
tx-size: 64

RB532s and one 1GHz router are running 2.9.31 and the other 1 GHz router is 2.9.30.

10

I have testing RB532 @330Mhz in 2 conditions:

1- one RB532 with Ether1 and Ether2 Bridged, No traking conn, PC AMD3000 in Ether1 and PCPentium IV 2800 in ETher2.

2- two RB532 with CM9 cards in Bridge, No traking conn, WDS and Nstreme (20Mhz channel) and the same computers.

I have testing also Supermicro server (PIV3200) with Ether 1000, max results 20.000pps :frowning: !!

The result don’t change, poor performance.
The CPU of ALvarion is Motorola 266Mhz with 64Mb RAM :frowning:

Any idea ??

Cuccio

11

Testing with 64Byte UDP packets ???
Sure ???

Cuccio

12

Yesssss !!!
Confirm, max 5Mbps in UDP with small pakets.

13

i just did this test also.

with UDP i could only get 1.06 mbits
with TCP i could get 13 mbits

end to end both rb532 single Nstreem

14

Alvarion have a concatenation and bursting for small packets:

“Packet concatenation for improved VOIP latency”

RouterOS have bursting, but not concatenation.

Cuccio

15

I thought “framer policy” in nstreme was something like Alvarion’s packet concatenation. If not, how does it differ?

We do mostly Alvarion links with MT on the ethernet side.

16

tool bandwidth-test XX.XX.XX.XX protocol=udp local-tx-size=64 remote-tx-size=64 direction=transmit random-data=yes user=admin duration=5s

this command is not correct for testing.

you have set too small testing time, routeros hasn’t even started the test yet, when you already interrupt it. set the time to few minutes

17

After 6 minutes, the througput is 6Mbps !!

Cuccio

18

Very very good program and GUI for traffic generation and analisys.
Good also for VoIP, generating VoIP packet with appropriate codec.

SW: http://www.grid.unina.it/software/ITG/
GUI: http://www.semken.com/projekte/index.html

Anyone have solution for UDP small packets ??

Bye Cuccio

19

after 5min still 1meg this is a problem

20

So, no solution for this situation from MT ? I hope MT will do some checking about this thread. Online gaming using the small packets too.