| Title: OpenBSD and Linux comparison: data transfer benchmark
Author: Solène
Date: 14 November 2021
Tags: openbsd networking
Description:
# Introduction
I had a high suspicion about something but today I made measurements.
My feeling is that downloading data from OpenBSD use more "upload data"
than on other OS
I originally thought about this issue when I found that using OpenVPN
on OpenBSD was limiting my download speed because I was reaching the
upload limit of my DSL line, but it was fine on Linux. From there,
I've been thinking since then that OpenBSD was using more out data but
I never measured anything before.
# Testing protocol
Now that I have an OpenBSD router it was easy to make the measures with
a match rule and a label. I'll be downloading a specific file from a
specific server a few times with each OS, so I'm adding a rule matching
this connection.
```pf.conf rule
match proto tcp from 10.42.42.32 to 145.238.169.11 label benchmark
```
Then, I've been downloading this file three times per OS and resetting
counter after each download and saved the results from "pfctl -s
labels" command.
|
|
The variance of each result per OS was very low, I used the average of
each columns as the final result per OS.
# Raw results
```results
OS total packets total bytes packets OUT bytes OUT packets IN bytes IN
----- ------------- ----------- ----------- --------- ---------- --------
OpenBSD 175348 158731602 72068 3824812 10328 154906790
OpenBSD 175770 158789838 72486 3877048 10328 154912790
OpenBSD 176286 158853778 72994 3928988 10329 154924790
Linux 154382 157607418 51118 2724628 10326 154882790
Linux 154192 157596714 50928 2713924 10326 154882790
Linux 153990 157584882 50728 2705092 10326 154879790
```
# About the results
A quick look will show that OpenBSD sent +42% OUT packets compared to
Linux and also +42% OUT bytes, meanwhile the OpenBSD/Linux IN bytes
ratio is nearly identical (100.02%).
|
