[clug] Small form PCs with good networking performance

[Dale Shaw]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a small form factor PC (e.g. sized like Intel NUC, Zotac
ZBOX and friends) with "good" network interface performance -- i.e. capable
of pushing line rate or close to line rate (gigabit Ethernet, for now). If
not small, then still relatively $cheap and preferably also quiet.

I'd like to build something that can be used to torture network devices
with lots of frames/packets and/or lots of bits.

Bonus points for something that's compatible with the Intel DPDK [1]. It
looks like there are some open source implementations of RFC2544 [2] and
EtherSam/Y.1564 [3] out there, too.

I'm currently tossing up between rolling-my-own and finding something off
the shelf to do this. I've used Accedian NIDs to run test suites in the
past but they're all $2.5K+ and do a lot more than what I really need.

Is anyone on the list dabbling with this kind of thing? A penny for your
thoughts.

Cheers,
Dale

[1] http://dpdk.org/doc/nics
[2] Benchmarking Methodology for Network Interconnect Devices (
https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2544.txt)
[3] Ethernet service activation test methodology (
http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-Y.1564-201103-I/en)