There Is Now A WireGuard Benchmark For Testing Linux Networking Performance

With WireGuard added to the Linux 5.6 kernel and it being back-ported to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and its tools getting packaged up by more Linux distributions, it's finally the year of WireGuard. With its usage set to skyrocket as supported kernels and the WireGuard utilities become available out-of-the-box on more distributions, there is now a WireGuard benchmark for stressing the kernel and its support.

Working with WireGuard lead developer Jason Donenfeld, there is now a Phoronix Test Suite test profile for evaluating the kernel performance. As explained by Donenfeld with the setup that requires just the local test system:

The way it works is it creates three namespaces. ns0 has a loopback device. ns1 and ns2 each have wireguard devices. Those two wireguard devices send traffic through the loopback device of ns0. The end result of this is that tests wind up testing encryption and decryption at the same time -- a pretty CPU and scheduler-heavy workflow.

Several tests are run:
- normal MTU: v4 over v4, tcp
- normal MTU: v4 over v6, tcp
- normal MTU: v6 over v4, tcp
- normal MTU: v6 over v6, tcp
- normal MTU: v4 over v4, udp
- normal MTU: v4 over v6, udp
- normal MTU: v6 over v4, udp
- normal MTU: v6 over v6, udp
- jumbo MTU: v4 over v4, tcp
- jumbo MTU: v4 over v6, tcp
- jumbo MTU: v6 over v4, tcp
- jumbo MTU: v6 over v6, tcp
- jumbo MTU: v4 over v4, udp
- jumbo MTU: v4 over v6, udp
- jumbo MTU: v6 over v4, udp
- jumbo MTU: v6 over v6, udp

Each of these tests transfers 10 gigabytes.

With the test profile on OpenBenchmarking.org, using any recent version of the Phoronix Test Suite you can now phoronix-test-suite benchmark wireguard assuming you are on a capable kernel and have the WireGuard user-space utilities already installed or available through your package management system where the Phoronix Test Suite can automatically locate them.

Thus we'll be having some benchmarks of WireGuard soon and in different kernel configurations. Those wanting to learn more about this exciting networking tech can do so at WireGuard.com.

In other benchmarking news, Qt 5.15 is bringing a Qt Quick 3D benchmark. That too will be available via the Phoronix Test Suite shortly.