Wireblast a 100 Gbps packet generator in Go using AF_XDP
🌐 Andree's Musings: Toonk.io
A collection of narratives, technical deep-dives, and experimental ideas emerging from the realm of Infrastructure Engineering.
🚀 High-Performance Networking & Go
Andree has a documented passion for pushing the boundaries of software-defined networking, specifically focusing on how to move packets at extreme velocities using the Go language.
The Evolution of Packet Speed
The journey from standard libraries to kernel bypass is a recurring theme. The progression generally looks like this:
net.Dial syscalls AF_PACKET AF_XDP.
Key Projects & Articles:
- Wireblast: A powerhouse packet generator capable of hitting 100 Gbps by leveraging
AF_XDPin Go. - Line-Rate Processing: Exploring the mechanics of achieving line-rate speeds within the Go ecosystem via
AF_XDP. - Transmission Deep-Dive: A detailed look at the transition from high-level Go networking to the lightning-fast
AF_XDPinterface.
☁️ Cloud Infrastructure & AWS
From the financial value of IP addresses to the intricacies of global acceleration, Andree analyzes the "big picture" of cloud networking.
The IPv4 Economy
AWS has aggressively expanded its IPv4 holdings. The scale of this investment is staggering:
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Total IPv4 Addresses | 128 Million |
| Recent Acquisition | +27 Million |
| Estimated Price per IP | $35 |
The Valuation Math: This represents a value increase of roughly $2 billion.
AWS Performance & Routing
- 100G Networking: A deep-dive exploration into achieving 100G performance within the AWS environment.
- Global Accelerator:
- Building a custom, "smarter" control plane for the AWS Global Accelerator.
- Implementing highly available Anycast services.
- Anycast Deployments: Comparing Anycast setups across Packet, Stackpath (using edge compute), and AWS.
🛡️ Zero Trust & Mysocket.io
A significant portion of Andree's work focuses on Mysocket, a platform designed to modernize how we handle private service access.
Core Philosophy: Trust the IP address Trust the Identity.
Feature Roadmap & Insights:
- Identity Aware Sockets: Replacing traditional IP-based firewalls with identity-based authentication.
- SSH Zero Trust: Implementing identity-aware TCP sockets for secure shell access.
- Beyond Corp: Enabling a "Beyond Corp" style architecture for private services.
- Global Load Balancing: Integrating Kubernetes with Mysocket for worldwide traffic distribution.
- Resilience: Using multi-region load balancing to survive major outages (e.g., the US-EAST1 failure).
- DNS Management: Introducing static DNS naming for services.
🛠️ Low-Level Networking & Kernel Hacks
Andree explores the "dark arts" of the Linux kernel to bypass bottlenecks.
Bypassing the Kernel
Because the standard Linux kernel can be a bottleneck for high-speed networking, Andree explores:
- XDP (eXpress Data Path): Building a BGP peering router based on XDP.
- VPP (Vector Packet Processing): Utilizing
FD.iofor a flexible, high-speed forwarding plane. - DPDK: Creating high-performance traffic generators to test hardware and troubleshoot customers.
Protocol & Traffic Analysis
- TCP BBR: An exploration of modern congestion control to optimize data flow.
- Routing Loops: A warning on the dangers of amplified routing loops and their utility in DDoS attacks.
- Throughput Measurement: Analyzing how the Linux kernel actually measures network speed.
📚 Miscellaneous Musings
Infrastructure Lessons
Reflecting on "battle scars" from various outages, including a deep dive into the Rogers outage report to extract actionable lessons for engineers.
AI & IP Markets
- AI Exploration: A journey into the world of vector databases and embeddings.
- IPv4 Sales: Analyzing the sale of the
43.0.0.0/8range by APIDT.
Automation
- Terraform: Ongoing experiments with infrastructure as code to deploy global services in minutes.
# Example conceptual Terraform block for a global service
resource "aws_global_accelerator_accelerator" "example" {
name = "wireblast-global-entry"
enabled = true
ip_address_type = "IPV4"
}