gobgp_client_benchmark

A minimal C++ gRPC client for benchmarking gobgpd's ListPath RPC — useful when you need to understand where time is spent serving a full BGP table to an API consumer (e.g. FastNetMon pulling ADJ_IN from a route collector).

For each iteration it measures:

• ttfb — time from sending the request to receiving the first streamed response.
• in_recv — time the client was blocked inside Read() (server + network + gRPC).
• in_proc — time spent between Read() calls, i.e. the client-side cost of walking destinations/paths and optionally touching the NLRI + attribute bytes.
• total — wall-clock time for the whole stream.

By default the client requests the "fully binary" path (enable_only_binary=true, enable_nlri_binary=true, enable_attribute_binary=true) so gobgpd skips its native→proto attribute type-switch and hands back the raw wire-format BGP NLRI and path attributes. Flip the binary flags off to measure the cost of the proto-native encoding path for comparison.

Build

The supported build path is a containerised build against Ubuntu 24.04's packaged gRPC / Protobuf so you don't need a local toolchain:

./build.sh
# produces ./dist/gobgp_client_benchmark

The resulting binary dynamically links against libgrpc++1.51t64 and libprotobuf32t64 — install those packages on the target host to run it.

If you'd rather build directly:

cmake -B build -S .
cmake --build build -j

Usage

# default: adj-in table, "fully binary" mode (only_binary + nlri_binary + attr_binary),
# iterate 5 times, decode every NLRI + every attribute slice.
./build/gobgp_client_benchmark --target SERVER:50051 --peer x.x.x.x --iterations 5

# Non-only-binary setup: server still returns raw NLRI/attribute bytes, but
# doesn't take the enable_only_binary shortcut — exercises the mixed code path.
./build/gobgp_client_benchmark --target SERVER:50051 --peer x.x.x.x \
    --only-binary false --nlri-binary true --attr-binary true

# Measure with vs. without client-side decode. With --decode false the client
# receives the stream but never touches the per-path byte buffers, so in_proc
# drops to almost zero and total ~= in_recv. Useful for isolating server cost.
./build/gobgp_client_benchmark --target SERVER:50051 --peer x.x.x.x --decode false

# Global RIB (the router's own post-policy table). --peer is not required
# because a global lookup isn't peer-scoped.
./build/gobgp_client_benchmark --target SERVER:50051 --table global

# Best-path-only per destination: for each prefix, process just paths(0)
# instead of every path in the ECMP / multipath set. Approximates what a
# consumer that only cares about the installed route pays.
./build/gobgp_client_benchmark --target SERVER:50051 --peer x.x.x.x --best-only true

Flags

Flag	Default	Meaning
--target HOST:PORT	127.0.0.1:50051	gRPC endpoint of gobgpd.
--peer IP	—	Peer address. Required for adj-in, adj-out, local.
--table NAME	adj-in	One of adj-in, adj-out, global, local.
--iterations N	3	Number of back-to-back runs.
--binary BOOL	true	Shorthand: set all three binary flags at once.
--only-binary BOOL	true	ListPathRequest.enable_only_binary.
--nlri-binary BOOL	true	ListPathRequest.enable_nlri_binary.
--attr-binary BOOL	true	ListPathRequest.enable_attribute_binary.
--decode BOOL	true	Scan nlri_binary + every pattrs_binary slice per path.
--best-only BOOL	false	Process only paths(0) per destination.
--deadline SEC	120	Per-iteration gRPC deadline.
--max-recv-mb N	1024	Max gRPC receive message size (a full table easily exceeds the default).

Booleans accept true/false, 1/0, yes/no.

Output

One line per iteration on stdout, plus a config header and a sink value on stderr (the sink is only there to stop the compiler from optimising out the byte-touch loop).

target=SERVER:50051 table=adj-in peer=x.x.x.x iterations=5 only_binary=1 nlri_binary=1 attr_binary=1 decode=1 best_only=0
run=1 dests=987654 paths=987654 decoded=987654 nlri_bytes=... attr_bytes=... ttfb_ms=12.3 in_recv_ms=4321.0 in_proc_ms=890.1 total_ms=5223.4
...

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.

The proto/api/*.proto files are vendored from osrg/gobgp and retain their upstream MIT-style copyright (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation).