Netbench: Framework for Evaluation of Packet Processing Algorithms

With the growing speed of computer networks, many algorithms and hardware architectures are proposed to increase processing speed of time-critical operations especially in the field of longest prefix matching, packet classification and regular expression matching. Despite many proposed algorithms and hardware architectures, there is still no free and easily extensible platform for evaluation and comparison with existing approaches. We propose new framework for easy evaluation and experiments with packet processing algorithms. The aim of the framework is to serve as an independent platform for researchers seeking the easiest way to implement their algorithms, as well as a comparison of their algorithms with reference implementations of other approaches. The framework is provided as an open source and can be easily extended to support new algorithms or new comparison methodology. Netbench is publicly available at http://www.fit.vutbr.cz/netbench.