How does FreeBSD expect to compete in a DPDK/VPP world?

Hi freebsd-net@,

I haven't kept much track on FreeBSD networking lately, since my 
contributions are mainly in the "desktop" sphere (primarily maintaining 
GNOME packages).

Over the past few years, I've heard a lot about products like DPDK, VPP, 
SDN, etc. (buzzwords) in the Linux world about software routers.

I've seen FreeBSD is largely absent in that world of kernel-bypass 
routing that Linux has been heavily invested in.

FreeBSD doesn't have an effective software-based router, lacks MPLS, 
mpd5 lacks native IPv6 without many shell script hacks, etc. Unless 
kernel-bypass routing is a fad or we have something equivalent 
performance-wise in the kernel, we could fall behind.

While we have pfSense and OPNsense and netmap, we don't have something 
pre-packaged for the so-called "carrier grade" routers unless you 
include Juniper. Linux has caught up networking-wise for a large part.

Not that I work at an ISP or tech company in a networking role, I don't. 
Heck, adding even MPLS support has been on my bucket list for a while, 
but am too lazy to get started. I do want to move to a networking-based 
role at $DAYJOB, but we'll see about that.

-Neel (nc@)