IAPS: Decreasing Software-Based Packet Steering Overhead Through Interrupt Reduction

Packet Steering is often performed in hardware, rendering the software-based packet steering mechanisms of the Linux kernel obsolete. However, the ability to redistribute packets later during network processing could help achieve a more parallelized network stack. Unfortunately, existing software-based packet steering schemes yield minimal performance gain at high communication costs. This paper proposes Interrupt Avoidance Packet Steering (IAPS), a novel packet steering scheme that reduces software-based packet steering overhead. IAPS decreases communication costs by avoiding hardware interrupt triggers during packet steering. IAPS increases application throughput by up to $\mathbf{4. 3 \%}$ and the packet per hardware interrupt ratio by up to 4 x.