Distributing to 8 Host Buffers

Configure the SmartNIC and capture frames on all ports and deliver to 8 host buffers.

About this task

This figure shows the test setup.

All ports of the SmartNIC are connected to the traffic generator. Received frames are distributed to 8 host buffers / streams using the 5-tuple hash mode.

Procedure

Configure the SmartNIC.
The Napatech driver uses host buffers to receive and transmit data. Host buffers are configured in the ntservice.ini file. Edit the ntservice.ini file.
```
vim /opt/napatech3/config/ntservice.ini
```
The following shows the default host buffer configuration.
```
NumaNode = -1
HostBuffersRx = [4,16,-1]
```
Four 16-Mbyte host buffers are configured on the NUMA node taken from the NumaNode value. NUMAnode = -1 means that the driver attempts to determine the NUMA node location of the SmartNIC. Set the number of the RX host buffers to 8 as follows.
```
HostBuffersRx = [8,16,-1]
```
ntservice must be stopped and restarted for changes to take effect.
```
/opt/napatech3/bin/ntstop.sh
/opt/napatech3/bin/ntstart.sh
```
See ntservice.ini for more information about the configuration parameters in the /opt/napatech3/config/ntservice.ini file.
Create a file with the following NTPL commands.
```
Delete = All
HashMode = Hash5TupleSorted
Assign[StreamId=(0..7)] = All
```
This configures the SmartNIC to distribute frames to stream 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 based on 5-tuple sorted hash values. The frames of the same IP/UDP/TCP session are delivered to the same stream using Hash5TupleSorted. Apply the NTPL commands.
```
/opt/napatech3/bin/ntpl -f <file_name>
```
An output example:
```
NTPL CMD: Delete = All
NTPL ID:    0
NTPL CMD: HashMode = Hash5TupleSorted
NTPL ID:    1
NTPL CMD: Assign[StreamId=(0..7)] = All
NTPL ID:    2
```

Start 8 instances of throughput.

/opt/napatech3/bin/throughput -s <stream_ID>

On each terminal, run one instance of throughput as follows.

/opt/napatech3/bin/throughput -s 0
/opt/napatech3/bin/throughput -s 1
/opt/napatech3/bin/throughput -s 2
...
/opt/napatech3/bin/throughput -s 7

Start transmitting frames on the traffic generator.
Run the monitoring tool on a new terminal to check the RX statistics.
```
/opt/napatech3/bin/monitoring
```

Run the profiling tool on a new terminal to check the host buffer status.

/opt/napatech3/bin/profiling

An output example:

│ Hb# A:Feed N Type      Pkt data           Pkts      Drop pkts  Buf%   #   ID │
│   0 0:000  1 RX       7E9EBEBDA        28E5288              0   0.0   0   0  │
│   1 0:001  1 RX       84BC675B4        2B515AC              0   0.0   0   1  │
│   2 0:002  1 RX       9A28CDFD8        31F0040              0   0.0   0   2  │
│   3 0:003  1 RX       881A42ABA        2CC49DA              0   0.0   0   3  │
│   4 0:004  1 RX       80DB6E778        29F84FE              0   0.0   0   4  │
│   5 0:005  1 RX       8933A3FAA        2C1A43C              0   0.0   0   5  │
│   6 0:006  1 RX       7DC75EDAC        285967C              0   0.0   0   6  │
│   7 0:007  1 RX       903307414        2EF8030              0   0.0   0   7  │
│   8 0:000  1 TX               -              -              -     -   0   -  │
│   9 0:001  1 TX               -              -              -     -   0   -  │
│  10 0:002  1 TX               -              -              -     -   0   -  │
│  11 0:003  1 TX               -              -              -     -   0   -  │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
 Quit Host Buffers Streams StreamIds Reset DecHex Tot/Spd FDump

Results

The received frames are distributed to 8 host buffers / streams.