Re: VirtIO Net Tuning

From: Mike Tancsa <mike_at_sentex.net>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2026 14:27:22 UTC
On 3/25/2026 10:06 AM, Mark Saad wrote:
> Hello All
>   I have been playing with FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE and 15.0-REELASE amd64 
> qemu powered vms on a Linux cloud hosting setup. I have noticed that 
> with VirtIO net ( vtnet ) interfaces there is some sort of tuning 
> required , or there is some sort of limitation on the packets per 
> second and overall throughput the nics can push.  I am not able to get 
> any one interface to push more then 6Gb/s bursts and 5.5Gb/s 
> sustained. Before I go off the deep end with details has anyone run 
> into this , is this a known issue ?
>
Note, there were a bunch of important bug and performance fixes to vtnet 
interfaces between 14.3 and 14.4 so I would test with 14.4 for sure over 
14.3.   No tuning done below.

vtnet0: flags=1008843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,LOWER_UP> 
metric 0 mtu 1500
options=ec07bb<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,JUMBO_MTU,VLAN_HWCSUM,TSO4,TSO6,LRO,VLAN_HWTSO,LINKSTATE,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6,HWSTATS>
         ether 52:54:00:0d:76:bc
         inet 192.168.122.15 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.122.255
         media: Ethernet autoselect (10Gbase-T <full-duplex>)
         status: active
         nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>


On a kvm hypervisor with an older xeon (E5-2690) to a RELENG_14 or 
RELENG_15 vm I get about 17Gbps in one direction.


iperf3 -R -c 192.168.122.15
Connecting to host 192.168.122.15, port 5201
Reverse mode, remote host 192.168.122.15 is sending
[  5] local 192.168.122.1 port 48864 connected to 192.168.122.15 port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate
[  5]   0.00-1.00   sec  1.90 GBytes  16.3 Gbits/sec
[  5]   1.00-2.00   sec  2.03 GBytes  17.4 Gbits/sec
[  5]   2.00-3.00   sec  2.04 GBytes  17.5 Gbits/sec
[  5]   3.00-4.00   sec  2.02 GBytes  17.3 Gbits/sec
[  5]   4.00-5.00   sec  2.00 GBytes  17.2 Gbits/sec
[  5]   5.00-6.00   sec  2.00 GBytes  17.2 Gbits/sec
[  5]   6.00-7.00   sec  2.01 GBytes  17.3 Gbits/sec
[  5]   7.00-8.00   sec  2.03 GBytes  17.4 Gbits/sec
[  5]   8.00-9.00   sec  2.03 GBytes  17.5 Gbits/sec
[  5]   9.00-10.00  sec  2.76 GBytes  23.7 Gbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  20.8 GBytes  17.9 Gbits/sec    0    sender
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  20.8 GBytes  17.9 Gbits/sec     receiver


     ---Mike