Behind the scenes: what device benchmarks can tell us

While software-based packet forwarding devices and middle-boxes are gaining momentum, also device diversity increases. This also challenges the area of device benchmarking. In this paper, we present our new benchmarking framework for OpenFlow switches that is running just on commodity server hardware. We present results of benchmarks and discuss how benchmarks reveal information about inner details of devices. As case study we implemented a new test to determine queue sizes and service rates based on a simple queuing theory model.