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Cilium Network Communication Acceleration

Introduction

This page describes how to configure Cilium's communication acceleration capability. There are two optional configuration methods.

Prerequisites

Please make sure the Linux Kernel version >= 4.9.17 with 5.10+ recommended. To view and install the latest version, you can do the following:

  1. To view the current kernel version:

    uname -r

  2. Install the ELRepo repository, which provides the latest Linux kernel version:

    rpm --import https://www.elrepo.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-elrepo.org
rpm -Uvh https://www.elrepo.org/elrepo-release-7.el7.elrepo.noarch.rpm

  3. Install the latest Linux kernel version:

    yum --enablerepo=elrepo-kernel install kernel-ml

    kernel-ml is the latest documented version of the kernel. You can also choose another version.

  4. Update the GRUB configuration to use the new kernel version at boot time:

    grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

First method：configure when creating the cluster

  1. Click Container Management → Clusters. On the page of Create Cluster, enter the cluster's basic information and node configuration, then go to Network Configuration to configure as follows: cilium-speedup01

    • Select cilium for the cluster's CNI plugin

    • Add other parameters as follows:

      # Auto direct node routes must be set to be true, otherwise cross-node traffic cannot be routed
auto-direct-node-routes: "true" 
# If masquerading is used, it will replace the iptables implementation based on eBPF.
# Require kernel 5.10 and later.
# Otherwise it will be downgraded to the iptables implementation even if enabled
enable-bpf-masquerade: "true" 
# When doing source address translation for Pod access to outside traffic, enable it if using tunnel mode.
# Disable it if BGP is used to connect to the physical network.
enable-ipv6-masquerade: "false" 
# Distribute no-ct iptables rules for the pod to improve performance.
install-no-conntrack-iptables-rules: "true" 
# Disable the ability for hosts to bypass their kernel stack when processing packets to speed up data forwarding. 
# Enable it by default, but fallback to legacy behavior if the host kernel does not support it.
enable-host-legacy-routing: "false"
# Turn on bandwidth-manager to improve the performance of tcp, udp
enable-bandwidth-manager: "true"
# Kube-proxy replacement feature can be enabled after removing kube-proxy component
kube-proxy-replacement: strict 
# Disable tunnel mode
tunnel: disabled
# (optional) bbr network blocking control, with the requirement of kernel > 5.18
enable-bbr: "true"

    • Use the default ConfigMaps for everything else

  2. Click Create Cluster to complete the creation.

Second method: modify Cilium ConfigMaps

If the cluster has been created and you need to enable acceleration parameters, you can modify the Cilium-Config file.

Click Container Management→ Clusters. Go to the created cluster and click ConfigMaps & Secrets. Select Config Items, find Cilium-config, and then click Edit to enter the following acceleration parameters:

cilium-sppedup02

speed-up03

Once the parameters are written, click OK to achieve Pod communication acceleration.

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