IFTASK Forwarder type

In past releases, SMI provided support for the Vector Packet Processing (VPP) data plane development kit (DPDK) forwarder for use with StarOS-based applications such as the 5G User Plane Function.

SMI now supports the use of the DPDK Internal Forwarder (IFTASK) for use with StarOS-based applications.

IFTASK support is enabled by the forwarder-type parameter as part of the day 0 configuration:

nodes control-plane

[ no ] vm-defaults upf day0 forwarder-type { IFTASK | VPP } 

If the forwarder type command is not issued, then VPP will be used as the forwarder type by default.

Once IFTASK has been set, the no variant of this command can be used to re-enable the VPP forwarder type.

When the forwarder type is set to IFTASK, the following additional parameters are used as part of the UPF day 0 configuration:

  • IFTASK_SERVICE_TYPE=0

  • IFTASK_CORES=44

  • IFTASK_MCDMA_CORES=50

These parameters are hard-coded and set automatically by SMI during the deployment process.