Paul Chaignon
pchaigno.bsky.social
Paul Chaignon
@pchaigno.bsky.social
150 followers 30 following 38 posts
System security, eBPF, and programmable networks. Working on Cilium's BPF-based datapath. He/him.
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It does not make sense to compare the performance of nftables and eBPF.

eBPF can take many different forms. Its performance will largely depend on its hook point, its maps, the algorithm its implementing. That's the point I tried to illustrate in pchaigno.github.io/ebpf/2020/09....
BPF Isn’t About Speed
This post benchmarks various approaches to filter egress traffic in the Linux kernel. It compares iptables, ipset, tc-bpf, and cgroup-bpf. It demonstrates how diverse aspects of the eBPF implementatio...
pchaigno.github.io
This was made possible by an idea from Hari Vishwanathan et al. implemented in March 2024 and further extended in August this year.

Next step is Agni formally verifying patchset submitted to the mailing list!

Pull request: github.com/bpfverif/agn....
Agni is now able to formally verify core #eBPF verifier logic in ~10 minutes! And all LTS kernels are covered daily!
github.com/bpfverif/agn...
At Kernel Recipes, Roman Gushchin presented his work on customizing the Linux out-of-memory handling with #eBPF. It allows you to control when the OOM killer is triggered and how to free memory (typically, what to kill).

Code: lore.kernel.org/bpf/20250818...
Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgDI...
The list of talks accepted for the #eBPF track at Linux Plumbers 2025 has been published: lpc.events/event/19/ses...! See you in Tokyo!

(You may need to click on Contribution list to see the talks.)
I've added 6 recent research papers on eBPF to my list, from SIGCOMM'25, SOSP'25, and IEEE S&P'25: pchaigno.github.io/bpf/2025/01/....
At the eBPF workshop, Panayiotis Gavriil introduced uXDP, a new XDP runtime that allows you to run unmodified XDP programs on top of DPDK or AF_XDP. uXDP was able to improve the performance of an unmodified Katran by 40%!

Slides: drive.google.com/file/d/1xrGE...
Paper: dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
Traditional profiling tools can introduce a lot of overhead when tracing XDP programs. At the eBPF workshop, Vladimiro Paschali presented a new tool that significantly reduces that overhead.

Slides: drive.google.com/file/d/1qsBS...
Paper: dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
Code: github.com/VladimiroPas...
Reposted by Paul Chaignon
For its academic research grants, eBPF Foundation received 27 proposals from 23 universities, ranging from improving verifier safety guarantees to enabling new use cases where eBPF can make a difference.

Two proposals will each receive a $50,000 research grant

ebpf.foundation/ebpf-foundat...
At the eBPF workshop, Srinivas Narayana presented a new approach to synthesize part of the #eBPF verifier. His team used it to improve the addition and subtraction analysis in Linux.

Slides: drive.google.com/file/d/1BbMr...
Paper: people.cs.rutgers.edu/~sn624/paper...
Code: github.com/bpfverif/vayu
The papers and slides from the SIGCOMM'25 #eBPF workshop are all online now! pchaigno.github.io/ebpf/2025/09...

Thanks to everyone who participated and presented in this third edition!
At SIGCOMM'25 yesterday, Alibaba Cloud showed how they improved the performance of their L7 LB in part with sk_reuseport #eBPF programs. As a result, they improved the efficiency of their L7 LB by almost 20%!

Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=J22-...
Paper: dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
Oh, I missed your paper presentation 😱 Happy to meet when you're available Tianyi!
I'm at SIGCOMM'25 until the end of the conference. Ping me if you want to chat about anything eBPF related! I'm interested to see what people are trying to build!
A lot of AI for networks, networks for AI, and LEO satellite networks, but also video streaming, datacenter networking, and all types of wireless networking.

I spotted four papers using eBPF :)
The top networking academic conference, SIGCOMM, is happening next week and the 88 papers are already available!
conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2025...
The list of papers accepted at the 3rd #eBPF workshop has been published! conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2025...
🐝🚀 Deadline Extended 🚀🐝
The submission deadline for the 2025 eBPF workshop at SIGCOMM has been extended!

New deadline: May 23rd.

Don't miss out! Submission link: ebpf25.hotcrp.com
With NSDI'25 coming to an end today, I've updated the list of #eBPF papers to include the three papers published at USENIX NSDI this year! pchaigno.github.io/bpf/2025/01/...
Ihor Solodrai started working on a visualization tool to help read #eBPF verifier logs! It shows the current verifier state at any point and tracks data dependencies. Hopefully, it'll make the logs less scary to newcomers!

Code: github.com/libbpf/bpfvv
Example: libbpf.github.io/bpfvv/?url=h...
📢 Call for Papers 📢
The CFP for the 2025 eBPF workshop is out!

📅 Deadline: May 8th
🔗 More info: conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2025...

Don't miss the chance to share your work with the eBPF 🐝community!
I'll give an introduction to #eBPF next week at the Rennes DevOps meetup!

I'll explain what it is concretely and the many use cases, from tracing to @cilium.io and more. I'll also try to address the many misconceptions around eBPF. Don't miss it if you're around and eBPF isn't yet all clear to you!
🚀 Ne manquez pas notre prochain Meetup DevOps Rennes le 27 mars dans les locaux de MaxDS ! 🚀

📋 "Introduction à eBPF : Moderniser Linux pour le cloud" par @pchaigno.bsky.social

Places limitées, inscription obligatoire : 👉 www.meetup.com/fr-FR/rennes...

#DevOps #Rennes #eBPF #Linux #Sécurité
I see many people asking for #nftables vs. #eBPF comparisons, but I think what they actually want is kube-proxy with nftables vs. Cilium or nftables vs. bpfilter. Whatever the results of such benchmarks, it won't tell us anything on eBPF as a whole.
It does not make sense to compare the performance of nftables and eBPF.

eBPF can take many different forms. Its performance will largely depend on its hook point, its maps, the algorithm its implementing. That's the point I tried to illustrate in pchaigno.github.io/ebpf/2020/09....
BPF Isn’t About Speed
This post benchmarks various approaches to filter egress traffic in the Linux kernel. It compares iptables, ipset, tc-bpf, and cgroup-bpf. It demonstrates how diverse aspects of the eBPF implementatio...
pchaigno.github.io
Reposted by Paul Chaignon
Recently, I have been busy exploring eBPF Arena — a new API that enables eBPF programs to allocate memory pages; similar functionality as mmap and munmap . I've written a blog post about it that I like to share with you: fshahinfar1.github.io/blog/04_ebpf...
eBPF Arena: A Tutorial
fshahinfar1.github.io