FreeBSD optimizations used by Netflix serving at 800Gb/s - Drew Gallatin - EuroBSDcon 2022

Quantifying the importance of several FreeBSD optimizations to serving web
traffic at extreme speeds.
In previous talks, I've focused on new optimizations such as NUMA and NIC kTLS offload, which are critical to serve 800Gb/s. In this talk, I'll focus on the
contributions of older, but equally critical optimizations, such as
TCP segmentation offload (TSO)
TCP large receive offload (LRO)
VM optimizations such as the UMA VM pg cache zone and batchqueues
Asynchronous sendfile
Unmapped (extpg) mbufs
I will briefly describe the importance of each of these unsung optimizations,
explain why they help, and quantify the value of each optimization using a
metric I call percent-CPU per Gb.
I will wrap up by putting them all together and showing results from an
experimental Netflix server serving production traffic at 720Gb/s.

[@Dink868]

Now we know why Netflix is always outperforming other streaming services. Powered by FreeBSD ❤️

[@williamgunnells2268]

As an openBSD enthusiast and plan9 user. Yea Linux is way too fragmented below distro the level no comparison in performance. Nice presentation! Impressive!

[@DocLulzson]

Watching this video on my FreeBSD 14.0 CURRENT / xfce 4.18 desktop btw.

[@Marcus-w7n]

But you can't watch netflix content on FreeBSD :)

[@DocLulzson]

@@Marcus-w7n 🙂 I can but obviously you can't 🤣

[@zam4ever]

Awesome! Hope it will break another record within next 1 to 3 years. Just to ask about the size of RAM. Is 512 GB due to hardware max limit or is it the best sizing for this kind of setup? Tq

[@Marcus-w7n]

while a FreeBSD user is served at 0kb/s as they can't watch Netflix on their beloved OS.

[@AntranigVartanian]

Unfortunetly the issue is the browsers, not Netflix, nor FreeBSD.

[@gradkb]

Amazing research.

[@DmytroSichkarOnline]

It's amazing!!!

[@DragonAvion]

Nice Information

[@quinnjones1221]

A lot of content for 1 hr. Just wondering...there is a lot of talk about physical hardware and VM specs. How do you reconsider all of these hardware-specific requirements as a partnership between Netflix and AWS? Does Netflix ask AWS to put these machines in their data centers as a collaborative effort exclusively for Netflix, or what is the situation here? Are these hardware configurations just generic configurations AWS has in place for all AWS users? Thanks

[@LtdJorge]

Hey, I have nothing to do with Netflix but I have read all their previous work on this. These are the "edge" servers, which they put in their PoPs (racks in datacenters around the world, where they can peer with telcos and other partners to deliver huge video traafic close to their users). So this is bare metal stuff run just by them, this is purely for serving video, all the other logic, their analytics, the transcoding beforehand, etc is what they run in AWS. Imagine if they had to serve up to 16Mbps per client from AWS, the egress fees would bankrupt them and the telcos would block their traffic.

[@michaelkulbe9930]

🎉😮🤘🤤

[@awsexpert]

Thats impressive! 😁 #awsexpert

[@lineways5477]

Hmm so FreeBSD is actually good for something

[@cyrylthewolf]

FreeBSD hosts a large portion of the internet's storage and network security platforms. JunOS is based on FreeBSD - for example. You may want to broaden your knowledge base a little.

[@tui3264]

BSD family inspired lot of tools in Linux

[@gregandark8571]

@@cyrylthewolf It's useless to talk with someone who's got an avatar with a mask on it.

[@cyrylthewolf]

@@gregandark8571 - It's even more useless trying to discuss with the willfully ignorant who purposefully ignore scientific facts. ESPECIALLY the ones who can't help but dispense their bullshit in the most irrelevant places for the sake of attention. Soooo... Kindly take that irrelevant, political garbage elsewhere and leave the discussion to the PROFESSIONALS. K? Please and thank you.

[@deamonkai]

Clearly you have no idea the number of systems which utilize it.