Introduction

The VPP platform is an extensible framework that provides out-of-the-box production quality switch/router functionality. It is the open source version of Cisco's Vector Packet Processing (VPP) technology: a high performance, packet-processing stack that can run on commodity CPUs.

The benefits of this implementation of VPP are its high performance, proven technology, its modularity and flexibility, and rich feature set.

For more information on VPP and its features please visit the FD.io website and What is VPP? pages.

Changes

Details of the changes leading up to this version of VPP can be found under Release Notes.

Directory layout

Directory name	Description
build-data	Build metadata
build-root	Build output directory
doxygen	Documentation generator configuration
dpdk	DPDK patches and build infrastructure
g2	Event log visualization tool
perftool	Performance tool
plugins	VPP bundled plugins directory
svm	Shared virtual memory allocation library
test	Unit tests
vlib	VPP application library source
vlib-api	VPP API library source
vnet	VPP networking source
vpp	VPP application source
vpp-api	VPP application API source
vppapigen	VPP API generator source
vpp-api-test	VPP API test program source
vppinfra	VPP core library source

(If the page you are viewing is not generated by Doxygen then ignore any @ref labels in the above table.)

Getting started

In general anyone interested in building, developing or running VPP should consult the VPP wiki for more complete documentation.

In particular, readers are recommended to take a look at Pulling, Building, Running, Hacking, Pushing which provides extensive step-by-step coverage of the topic.

For the impatient, some salient information is distilled below.

Quick-start: On an existing Linux host

To install system dependencies, build VPP and then install it, simply run the build script. This should be performed a non-privileged user with sudo access from the project base directory:

./build-root/vagrant/build.sh

If you want a more fine-grained approach because you intend to do some development work, the Makefile in the root directory of the source tree provides several convenience shortcuts as make targets that may be of interest. To see the available targets run:

make

Quick-start: Vagrant

The directory build-root/vagrant contains a VagrantFile and supporting scripts to bootstrap a working VPP inside a Vagrant-managed Virtual Machine. This VM can then be used to test concepts with VPP or as a development platform to extend VPP. Some obvious caveats apply when using a VM for VPP since its performance will never match that of bare metal; if your work is timing or performance sensitive, consider using bare metal in addition or instead of the VM.

For this to work you will need a working installation of Vagrant. Instructions for this can be found on the Setting up Vagrant wiki page.

More information

Several modules provide documentation, see User Documentation for more information.

Visit the VPP wiki for details on more advanced building strategies and development notes.