Linux Distributions vs. BSDs With netperf & iperf3 Network Performance

In many of the netperf tests, there isn't much of a performance difference, similar to some of the iperf3 runs.

With Netperf's TCP request response test, there was finally some difference between the operating systems. Interestingly, FreeBSD 11.0 was on top by a wide margin. With the longer TCP request response test, Intel's Clear Linux was the fastest, followed then by DragonFlyBSD. Fedora 25 was the slowest in the TCP request response time for both the 10 and 60 second runs.

With the UDP request response times by netperf, FreeBSD 11.0 was again leading. We've heard good things about FreeBSD for networking performance from the likes of Netflix, but hadn't anticipated FreeBSD performing so strongly in some of these tests. Clear Linux remained the fastest of the Linux distributions with the UDP request response testing.

In the other netperf tests, there was barely any difference in the results.

Those wishing to dig through these iperf3/netperf numbers further can find the data-set on OpenBenchmarking.org and/or carry out your own benchmarks via the Phoronix Test Suite.