Network stream events shouldn't be cloned

[sandreim]

Currently, the NetworkWorker creates one clone per event stream listener in https://github.com/paritytech/substrate/blob/master/client/network/src/service/out_events.rs#L219 .

For example, in a simple Versi test with 200 validators and 40 parachains we get around a bit above 1MB/s of traffic/events from the network:

Considering that there 5 such listeneres, I think this is a big problem with the current design, as in practice 5 additional copies are created wasting memory and CPU for free, raising the total internal traffic to more than 5MB/s.

We should strive for a 0 copy approach in our internal network stack architecture, for example we could use Bytes crate or just a simple Arc to avoid the unneeded extra copies. Additionally we could also do the per protocol filtering at lower level, instead of doing it in all of the consumers of these messages. It might worth looking into optimizing the protocol name check per messages as it seems wasteful since these are big strings based on genesis hashes. On connection we could negotiate some shorter name, or just an integer and use that instead.

FWIW this likely contributes to the CPU usage pattern we observe, see https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/702 .

[sandreim]

CC @altonen @tomaka

[tomaka]

(I'm no longer working for Parity)

On connection we could negotiate some shorter name, or just an integer and use that instead.

Please don't change the wire protocol names for what should be an internal fix. The protocol name is sent only once, when the substream is opened. The fact that subsequently the protocol name is compared at every message is an implementation design choice of Substrate.

[altonen]

This is addressed in the upcoming refactoring, we just have to fix other more higher-priority issues but I should get back to that task soon, hopefully.

[sandreim]

@tomaka

(I'm no longer working for Parity)

I know that, but I just felt that you might have some feedback on this :)

On connection we could negotiate some shorter name, or just an integer and use that instead.

Please don't change the wire protocol names for what should be an internal fix. The protocol name is sent only once, when the substream is opened. The fact that subsequently the protocol name is compared at every message is an implementation design choice of Substrate.

I am not implying to change the wire names, but fix the internal design choice.

@altonen it's good to hear that this is being considered in the refactoring. Not trying to add any pressure or change your priorities right away, but is there any branch we could test already with this improvement ? I would prefer to test it as a PoC sooner rather than later, just so we know how much it helps when scaling up the number of paravalidators/cores. Currently we are focusing to reduce the network messages we send just to avoid the CPU usage issues.

[altonen]

The Substrate side is ready but the Polkadot companion is still WIP but that's also close to being ready. The issue is that the Polkadot networking code is quite heavily leaning on the concept that all messages are read and written using the same object which clashes with the design so it requires some refactoring.

I'll let you know as soon as there is even a preliminary implementation that works which shouldn't take too long.

[vstakhov]

Is there any WIP PR to look at?

[altonen]

@vstakhov https://github.com/paritytech/substrate/pull/14197