luigirizzo/netmap

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

1973 stars · 549 forks observed · 2026-10-21

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

Netmap is a framework for extremely fast packet I/O from userspace, implemented as a kernel module for FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows. It includes VALE, an equally fast in-kernel L2 software switch, and sample applications like pkt-gen for traffic generation.

Use cases

• build high-speed traffic generators and packet sinks
• implement software switches and routers in userspace
• capture and monitor packets at 10G/40G line rate
• interconnect virtual machines with fast virtual network ports
• run libpcap applications at much higher speeds
• benchmark network drivers and middleboxes

When to choose

• you need to process tens of millions of packets per second from userspace
• you are building traffic generators, monitors, or software middleboxes
• you need fast packet I/O on FreeBSD or Linux with a mature, well-documented API
• you want to interconnect VMs at high speed via QEMU or bhyve

When to avoid

• you need accelerated TCP/IP stack functionality out of the box
• your application works fine with standard sockets or libpcap performance
• you need a portable solution across many operating systems beyond FreeBSD/Linux/Windows
• you are unwilling to work with kernel modules and memory-mapped ring buffers

Facets

framework · maturity stable

networking developer-tools benchmarking networking developer-tools performance operating-systems bsd windows c packet-io high-performance kernel-module vale-switch traffic-generation zero-copy network-virtualization linux

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="luigirizzo/netmap")