n2n/doc/BuildConfig.md

Configuration at Build time

There are a number of configuration options that are made only at build time.

In order to assist with cross compilation, minimising test cases, repeatable builds and minimising externalities, the build options are generally defaulted to off.

As part of simplifying cross compilation, the use of auto-detected configuration settings are being removed.

Options

After changing any configuration, please do no forget to make clean after the (re-)configuration and before building (again) using make.

--with-zstd

ZSTD Compression Support

In addition to the built-in LZO1x for payload compression (-z1 at the edge's commandline), n2n optionally supports ZSTD. As of 2020, it is considered cutting edge and praised for reaching the currently technologically possible Pareto frontier in terms of CPU power versus compression ratio.

Makefile

ZSTD support can be configured using

./configure --with-zstd

which then will include ZSTD. It will be available via -z2 at the edges. Of course, it can be combined with the other optimisation features:

./configure --with-zstd --with-openssl CFLAGS="-O3 -march=native"

Again, and this needs to be reiterated sufficiently often, please do no forget to make clean after (re-)configuration and before building (again) using make.

--with-openssl

Use openssl instead of the built-in AES code

The speed of some ciphers' can take advantage of OpenSSL support This is disabled by default as the built-in ciphers already prove reasonably fast in most cases.

When enabled, this will include OpenSSL 1.1. This can also be combined with the hardware support and compiler optimizations such as.

./configure --with-openssl CFLAGS="-O3 -march=native"

To activate, add --with-openssl to the configure command

--with-edgex

A legacy option intended to help cross compilation - if you use this option please let us know as there are probably more modern options for cross-compiling

--enable-pthread

Enable threading using the pthread library

--enable-cap

Use the libcap to provide reduction of the security privileges needed in the running daemon

--enable-pcap

If the pcap library is available then the n2n-decode tool can be compiled.

--enable-natpmp

One of the two UPnP libraries, this one supports the NATPMP protocol. See also the next option.

This option depends on the library being installed - on Debian and Ubuntu, this is apt-get install libnatpmp-dev

--enable-miniupnp

Enables the other kind of UPnP port mapping protocol.

Turning on either of these two UPnP libraries will enable UPnP support within the n2n-portfwd tool.

This option depends on the library being installed - on Debian and Ubuntu, this is apt-get install libminiupnpc-dev

Disable Multicast Local Peer Detection

For better local peer detection, the edges try to detect local peers by sending REGISTER packets to a certain multicast address. Also, edges listen to this address to eventually fetch such packets.

If these packets disturb network's peace or even get forwarded by (other) edges through the n2n network, this behavior can be disabled

Makefile

Add -DSKIP_MULTICAST_PEERS_DISCOVERY

to your CFLAGS when configuring, e.g.

./configure --with-zstd CFLAGS="-O3 -march=native -DSKIP_MULTICAST_PEERS_DISCOVERY"

Deprecation of --with options

Due to historical reasons, the autoconf system does not validate the syntax of any --with-X style options, thus to provide the highest confidence in the correctness of configuration and compilation, --enable-X style options are preferred. As part of this, the older --with-X options will eventually be migrated to use --enable-X

Optimisation options

Compiler Optimizations

The easiest way to boosting speed is by allowing the compiler to apply optimization to the code. To let the compiler know, the configuration process can take in the optionally specified compiler flag -O3:

./configure CFLAGS="-O3"

The tools/n2n-benchmark tool reports speed-ups of 200% or more! There is no known risk in terms of instable code or so.

Hardware Features

Some parts of the code significantly benefit from compiler optimizations (-O3) and platform features such as NEON, SSE and AVX. It needs to be decided at compile-time. Hence if compiling for a specific platform with known features (maybe the local one), it should be specified to the compiler – for example through the -march=sandybridge (you name it) or just -march=native for local use.

So far, the following portions of n2n's code benefit from hardware features:

AES:               AES-NI
ChaCha20:          SSE2, SSSE3
SPECK:             SSE2, SSSE3, AVX2, AVX512, (NEON)
Random Numbers:    RDSEED, RDRND (not faster but more random seed)

The compilations flags could easily be combined:

./configure CFLAGS="-O3 -march=native".

There are reports of compile errors showing n2n_seed': random_numbers.c:(.text+0x214): undefined reference to _rdseed64_step' even though the CPU should support it, see #696. In this case, best solution found so far is to disable RDSEED support by adding -U__RDSEED__ to the CFLAGS.

SPECK – ARM NEON Hardware Acceleration

By default, SPECK does not take advantage of ARM NEON hardware acceleration even if compiled with -march=native. The reason is that the NEON implementation proved to be slower than the 64-bit scalar code on Raspberry Pi 3B+, see here.

Your specific ARM mileage may vary, so it can be enabled by configuring the definition of the SPECK_ARM_NEON macro:

./configure CFLAGS="-DSPECK_ARM_NEON"

Just make sure that the correct architecture is set, too. -march=native usually works quite well.