Benchmarking BGP Routers

Determining which routes to use when forwarding traffic is one of the major processing tasks in the control plane of computer networks. We present a novel benchmark that evaluates the performance of the most commonly used Internet-wide routing protocol, the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Using this benchmark, we evaluate four different systems that implement BGP, including a uni-core and a dual-core workstation, an embedded network processor, and a commercial router. We present performance results for these systems under various loads of cross-traffic and explore the tradeoffs between different system architectures. Our observations help identify bottlenecks and limitations in current systems and can lead to next-generation router architectures that are better optimized for this important workload.