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Packets per Second Limitations in EC2

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31–40 of 44 posts

Re: Packets per Second Limitations in EC2

#31
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By default, Amazon uses stateless firewall. It means that by default it's not tracking connections.

I think you may be mistaken. Security Groups are stateful: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/VPC_Securit... As suggested, it's very likely they hit the connection tracking limitation: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-ne... I've personally witnessed teams hit this specifically for DNS (usually for internal, where you have explicitly permitted src/dst).

Yep I mistaken Security groups with Network Acl. Thanks. It's in the best practices to not track dns for big systems.

From powerdns https://doc.powerdns.com/recursor/performance.html

Re: Packets per Second Limitations in EC2

#32
post #20

A more plausible explanation is that the xen networking path is simply expensive, the intel VFs are limited by queue count and silicon (i40e isn't a great ASIC), and the Annapurna part is really an ARM64 NPU. NPUs have been abandoned by most silicon vendors and have a tragic history. It's simply hard to make NPUs work right at attractive price/power/performance and at high speed versus fixed function scatter/gather I…

Interesting theories on the EC2/Annapurna situation. Do GCP, Azure, or any other cloud providers offer 100G networking?

Sounds like a marketing blurb but from just a few days ago:

"Azure is breaking the speed barrier in cloud connectivity. ExpressRoute Direct provides 100G connectivity for customers with extreme bandwidth needs. This is 10x faster than other clouds."

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-networking-fall...

Can sb confirm that? Have a useful case in mind.

Re: Packets per Second Limitations in EC2

#33
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By default, Amazon uses stateless firewall. It means that by default it's not tracking connections.

I think you may be mistaken. Security Groups are stateful: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/VPC_Securit... As suggested, it's very likely they hit the connection tracking limitation: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-ne... I've personally witnessed teams hit this specifically for DNS (usually for internal, where you have explicitly permitted src/dst).

Thx for the clarification. Had the same misconception

Re: Packets per Second Limitations in EC2

#35
post #20

A more plausible explanation is that the xen networking path is simply expensive, the intel VFs are limited by queue count and silicon (i40e isn't a great ASIC), and the Annapurna part is really an ARM64 NPU. NPUs have been abandoned by most silicon vendors and have a tragic history. It's simply hard to make NPUs work right at attractive price/power/performance and at high speed versus fixed function scatter/gather I…

I'm slightly confused as you are both talking about AWS Nitro and XEN. I know Nitro moved off of Xen and was roughly based on KVM.

Also, are you talking about Annapurna in it's pre-acquisition form or new one? AWS talks about new custom asics and multiple ARM SoCs on their Nitro system.

Re: Packets per Second Limitations in EC2

#36
post #20

A more plausible explanation is that the xen networking path is simply expensive, the intel VFs are limited by queue count and silicon (i40e isn't a great ASIC), and the Annapurna part is really an ARM64 NPU. NPUs have been abandoned by most silicon vendors and have a tragic history. It's simply hard to make NPUs work right at attractive price/power/performance and at high speed versus fixed function scatter/gather I…

Interesting theories on the EC2/Annapurna situation. Do GCP, Azure, or any other cloud providers offer 100G networking?

Not to the instance, AFAIK. Google Cloud maxes out at ~20Gbps, and I think Azure does ~40Gbps.

Re: Packets per Second Limitations in EC2

#37
post #20

A more plausible explanation is that the xen networking path is simply expensive, the intel VFs are limited by queue count and silicon (i40e isn't a great ASIC), and the Annapurna part is really an ARM64 NPU. NPUs have been abandoned by most silicon vendors and have a tragic history. It's simply hard to make NPUs work right at attractive price/power/performance and at high speed versus fixed function scatter/gather I…

100G line rate with large packets is only 8 Mpps, that's only ~5G with 64 byte packets.

Re: Packets per Second Limitations in EC2

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting theories on the EC2/Annapurna situation. Do GCP, Azure, or any other cloud providers offer 100G networking?

Not to the instance, AFAIK. Google Cloud maxes out at ~20Gbps, and I think Azure does ~40Gbps.

It's really about flows as well, not necessarily total throughput.

AWS Nitro allows 5G/bit per flow. And then maxes out at 25G/bit. I know GCP does something similar.

Also, pretty sure that is false regarding Azure, they have a small availability of Infiniband, but, that is not on their general compute platform and has a narrow use case/many restrictions. Azure has had the worst networking performance from my experience and only had 10GbE NICs (it's been a while though)

Re: Packets per Second Limitations in EC2

#39
post #20

A more plausible explanation is that the xen networking path is simply expensive, the intel VFs are limited by queue count and silicon (i40e isn't a great ASIC), and the Annapurna part is really an ARM64 NPU. NPUs have been abandoned by most silicon vendors and have a tragic history. It's simply hard to make NPUs work right at attractive price/power/performance and at high speed versus fixed function scatter/gather I…

James Hamilton talked about their commitment to 25GbE hardware at Reinvent in 2016. Fast forward to ~23m. https://youtu.be/AyOAjFNPAbA

Re: Packets per Second Limitations in EC2

#40
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting theories on the EC2/Annapurna situation. Do GCP, Azure, or any other cloud providers offer 100G networking?

Sounds like a marketing blurb but from just a few days ago: "Azure is breaking the speed barrier in cloud connectivity. ExpressRoute Direct provides 100G connectivity for customers with extreme bandwidth needs. This is 10x faster than other clouds." https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-networking-fall... Can sb confirm that? Have a useful case in mind.

I do not believe ExpressRoute is instance level, so not directly relevant to this discussion.
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