Summary

Add native CLI support for NIC hardware queue configuration (ethtool combined channels) and RSS/IRQ affinity mapping.

Use case

Performance tuning is a fundamental step when deploying a software router in high-throughput or low-latency environments. Currently, VyOS lacks native commands to manage the hardware resources of the NIC, forcing users to rely on shell scripts.

Key use cases include:

• Queue Alignment: Adjusting the number of combined channels to match the CPU core count or specific multi-queue requirements of the NIC.
• Core Isolation: Binding IRQs/queues to specific cores (e.g., skipping Core 0 which often handles system interrupts) to prevent bottlenecks at the CPU level.
• NUMA Optimization: In multi-socket systems, it is critical to bind a NIC's queues to the specific CPU socket (NUMA node) it is physically connected to. This avoids performance degradation caused by UPI/QPI traversal.

Additional information

While these settings can be applied via vyos-postconfig-bootup.script, this approach breaks the "Single Source of Truth" principle of the VyOS CLI. It makes configurations harder to backup, and migrate to new hardware.

Proposed CLI syntax for consideration:

# Set the number of combined queues (ethtool -L)
set interfaces ethernet eth0 hardware combined 16

# RSS Affinity: Specific core list (e.g., to avoid Core 0 or specific isolated cores)
set interfaces ethernet eth0 hardware rss core '2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16'

# RSS Affinity: Automatic mapping to a specific CPU socket (NUMA node)
set interfaces ethernet eth1 hardware rss node 1

Implementing this would bring VyOS closer to enterprise-grade NOS standards where hardware-level performance tuning is handled natively within the configuration model.