ProSBC Requirements Matrix

This matrix lists the session capacities TelcoBridges has measured for ProSBC, and the network interface cards each configuration was tested with. Use it to size a deployment: find the session count you need, then check that your platform and NIC combination appears on that row.

How to read the networking modes

The Networking column describes how the virtual machine reaches the physical network interface. The mode has a large effect on achievable session capacity.

• Emulation presents a software-emulated NIC to the guest. It is the most portable option and the slowest, because every packet passes through the hypervisor's emulation layer.

• Para-virtualized uses a driver that is aware it is running in a virtual machine (for example VMXNET3 or virtio). It avoids most of the emulation overhead and roughly doubles capacity over emulation on the same hardware.

• Passthrough / SR-IOV gives the virtual machine direct access to the physical NIC, bypassing the hypervisor's network stack. SR-IOV divides one physical card into several virtual functions so multiple guests can share it. This is the fastest virtualized option.

• Physical is a bare-metal install with no hypervisor in the path.

RSS is Receive Side Scaling, a NIC feature that spreads incoming packets across multiple CPU cores instead of interrupting a single core. It is required to reach the highest session counts, which is why it appears only on the larger configurations.

"Not tested" means exactly that. A cell marked Not tested has not been measured by TelcoBridges in this combination. It is not a statement that the configuration is unsupported or that it will not work — only that no verified capacity figure exists for it. Contact TelcoBridges support if you need a figure for a combination that is not listed.

Sessions	Networking	Tested Server	Platform	RSS	1G i350, i210	10G X520, X540	10G X710
1000	emulation	R610	Proxmox/KVM	Not tested	Yes	Yes	Yes
1600	para-virtualized	R610	Proxmox/KVM	Not tested	Yes	Yes	Yes
4800	emulation	m5.12xlarge	AWS	Not tested	Not tested	Not tested	Not tested
5000	emulation	R610	VmWare	Not tested	Yes	Yes	Yes
5000	Physical	Atom	Baremetal	Not tested	Yes	Yes	Yes
8000	para-virtualized	R610	VmWare	Not tested	Not tested	Yes	Yes
13000	Passthrough/SR-IOV	R610	Proxmox/KVM/VmWare	Not tested	Not tested	Yes	Yes
25000	Physical	R610	Baremetal	Not tested	Not tested	Yes	Yes
26000	Passthrough/SR-IOV	R610	Proxmox/KVM/VmWare	Yes	Not tested	Not tested	Yes
42000	Physical	R610	Baremetal	Yes	Not tested	Yes	Yes
50000	Physical	R330 (MID)	Baremetal	Yes	Not tested	Yes	Yes
60000+	Physical	R330 (MID)	Baremetal	Yes	Not tested	Yes (2 ports)	Yes (2 ports)

Related

• Network Interface Requirements

• List of Supported Network Interface Cards

• SBC Certified Hardware