Performance evaluation of Linux CAN-related system calls

Linux kernel contains a full featured CAN bus networking subsystem. It can be accessed from applications via several different interfaces. This paper compares the performance of those interfaces and tries to answer the question, which interface is most suitable for capturing traffic from a big number of CAN buses. Motivation for this work is the development of various CAN traffic analyzers and intrusion detection systems. Besides traditional UNIX interfaces we also investigate the applicability of recently introduced “low-latency sockets” to the Linux CAN sub-system. Although the overhead of Linux in general is quite large, some interfaces offer significantly better performance than others.