Packet classification algorithms have been the focus of research for the last few years, due to the vital role they play in various services based on packet forwarding. However, as the number of rules in the rule set increases, not only the preprocessing time but also the memory consumption is increasing greatly. In this paper, we first model and analyze the above issue in depth. Then, a fast, smart packet classification algorithm based on decomposition is proposed. By boundary-based rule traversal and smart rule set partitioning, both the preprocessing time and memory consumption are reduced dramatically. Experimental results show that the preprocessing time of our method achieves 8.8-time improvement at maximum compared with the PCIU and achieves about 31.5-time improvement on average compared with CutSplit for large rule sets. Meanwhile, the memory overhead is reduced by 40% at maximum and 27.5% on average compared with the PCIU.

The continuous increase in network traffic has sharply increased the demand for high-performance packet processing systems. For a high-performance packet processing system based on multi-core processors, the packet scheduling algorithm is critical because of the significant role it plays in load distribution, which is related to system throughput, attracting intensive research attention. However, it is not an easy task since the canonical flow-level packet scheduling algorithm is vulnerable to traffic locality, while the packet-level packet scheduling algorithm fails to maintain cache affinity. In this paper, we propose an adaptive throughput-first packet scheduling algorithm for DPDK-based packet processing systems. Combined with the feature of DPDK burst-oriented packet receiving and transmitting, we propose using Subflow as the scheduling unit and the adjustment unit making the proposed algorithm not only maintain the advantages of flow-level packet scheduling algorithms when the adjustment does not happen but also avoid packet loss as much as possible when the target core may be overloaded Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms Round-Robin, HRW (High Random Weight), and CRC32 on system throughput and packet loss rate.