Windows Server 2019 vs. Linux vs. FreeBSD Gigabit & 10GbE Networking Performance

The Gigabit testing is far less interesting, but here are those numbers for those curious how much the OS plays into Gigabit networking overhead in 2019. Again, this testing was done with an Intel I210 adapter on the Tyan Xeon server.

The Linux distributions, Windows Server 2019, and FreeBSD 12.0 are basically aligned when bound to 1 Gigabit speeds...

The TCP latency tests with Ethr though are interesting and show higher latency with Windows Server 2019 compared to the Linux distributions. Clear Linux meanwhile had the lowest TCP latency in these tests.

Clear Linux did edge out past the other Linux distributions for the HTTP bandwidth benchmark while Windows Server 2019 picked up a second place finish.

With Ethr's TCP connection test, Clear Linux was also the fastest followed by Debian while Windows Server 2019 was the slowest right behind Scientific Linux 7.6.

When hitting eight threads for the TCP connection test, Debian 9.6 pulled out a win. With our previous round of 10GbE networking tests, we found Debian 9.6 did surprisingly well overall and would often tango with Clear Linux for offering the most competitive networking performance.

While Windows Server 2019 came in last with a number of the networking tests, it did in many of the Gigabit and 10GbE tests compete with the other operating systems... The networking performance was certainly more competitive than Windows Server vs. Linux in CPU/system benchmarks. FreeBSD 12.0 competed very well and was generally in line with the Linux networking performance for these Intel Gigabit and Mellanox 10GbE network tests.