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docs: update port benchmark results #4163

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37 changes: 29 additions & 8 deletions website/content/en/docs/config/port.md
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Expand Up @@ -23,14 +23,18 @@ The default was further reverted to GRPC in Lima v1.1, as the stability issues w

### Using SSH

SSH based port forwarding is the legacy mode that was previously default.
SSH based port forwarding was previously the default mode.

To explicitly use SSH forwarding use the below command

```bash
LIMA_SSH_PORT_FORWARDER=true limactl start
```

#### Advantages

- Outperforms GRPC when VSOCK is available

#### Caveats

- Doesn't support UDP based port forwarding
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -67,15 +71,17 @@ LIMA_SSH_PORT_FORWARDER=false limactl start
#### Advantages

- Supports both TCP and UDP based port forwarding
- Performs faster compared to SSH based forwarding
- Performs faster compared to SSH based forwarding, when VSOCK is not available
- No additional child process for port forwarding

### Benchmarks

| Use case | GRPC | SSH |
|-------------|----------------|----------------|
| TCP | 3.80 Gbits/sec | 3.38 Gbits/sec |
| TCP Reverse | 4.77 Gbits/sec | 3.08 Gbits/sec |
<!-- When updating the benchmark result, make sure to update the benchmarking environment too -->

| Use case | GRPC | **SSH (w/ VSOCK)** | SSH (w/o VSOCK) |
|-------------|----------------|--------------------|-----------------|
| TCP | 5.37 Gbits/sec | 6.32 Gbits/sec | 4.06 Gbits/sec |
| TCP Reverse | 7.11 Gbits/sec | 7.47 Gbits/sec | 3.84 Gbits/sec |

The benchmarks detail above are obtained using the following commands

Expand All @@ -84,7 +90,22 @@ Host -> limactl start vz

VZ Guest -> iperf3 -s

Host -> iperf3 -c 127.0.0.1 //Benchmark for TCP
Host -> iperf3 -c 127.0.0.1 -R //Benchmark for TCP Reverse
Host -> iperf3 -c 127.0.0.1 //Benchmark for TCP (average of "sender" and "receiver")
Host -> iperf3 -c 127.0.0.1 -R //Benchmark for TCP Reverse (same as above)
```

<details>
<summary>Benchmarking environment</summary>
<p>

- Lima version: 2.0.0-alpha.2
- Guest: Ubuntu 25.04
- OpenSSH 9.9p1
- iperf 3.18
- Host: macOS 26.0.1
- OpenSSH 10.0p2
- iperf 3.19.1 (Homebrew)
- Hardware: MacBook Pro 2024 (M4 Max, 128 GiB)

</p>
</details>