Testing setup

Testing is done in ISC internal network and it's using 3 systems. Two are running Kea and database backends (specs below) and one is running perfdhcp, all three are connected in one VLAN using 1 gigabit ethernet network.

Hardware specs - R340 server

OS details, software versions

Tests were executed using:

Kea performance testing principles

Kea configuration

At this point all tests are executed when Kea is configured with one subnet, that has just one pool, without any host reservations, client classes or options.
Everywhere we can, we are using default values (e.g. lease reclamation process).
Valid lifetime of leases are longer than duration of each test.
More scenarios will be added over time.

Clients behaviour

There are no releases/renews/rebinds only basic 4 message exchange (SARR and DORA).
Each client perform exchange just once.
Messages do not include any additional options except those necessary to get an address from DHCP server.

Traffic generator

For all tests we are using traffic generator that was developed by ISC and which is available in Kea sources/packages - perfdhcp
We encourage to visit KEA ARM for more details

Lessons learned

Disclaimers

Performance testing results are volatile, multiple factors has to be taken to account e.g.: hardware, OS type, network, database location (local, remote), compilation CXX flags etc.
Results shown in this report are what we were able to get inside our testing network - those are NOT, by any means, guaranteed.
Kea development team takes performance and stability very seriously - please report on kea-users mailing lists any irregularities you observed inside your network.