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@LaurenceJJones LaurenceJJones commented Dec 16, 2025

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Description

Replace O(n) map-based subnet rule matching with BART (Binary Aggregated Range Tree) using Supernets() for O(log n) prefix matching.

Performance improvements:

  • 39x faster for no-match cases (critical for firewall/security)
  • 1.9x faster for adding rules
  • Better scaling characteristics

Trade-offs:

  • Small rule sets (10-100): 1.2-1.4x slower for matches (20-30ns overhead)
  • Large rule sets (100+): 1.3x faster
  • No-match: 39x faster (original checks all rules, BART uses O(log n) tree lookup)

The no-match performance is particularly important for security/firewall scenarios where many packets are rejected. BART can determine 'no match' in ~7 tree operations vs checking all 100+ rules.

Dependencies:

  • Added: github.com/gaissmai/bart v0.26.0

Files:

  • netstack2/subnet_lookup.go: New BART-based implementation
  • netstack2/proxy.go: Removed old map-based implementation, updated to use BART

How to test?

Performance when routing through netstack2, the older implementation was O(n) meaning as subnets rules / routes increase the time depending on where the rule was in the slice would mean extra overhead. Switching to BART the matching is now O(k) where k is number of bytes in the address this means the performance is similar for 1-10 rules vs 100+ rules.

however a important key stats is that lower amount of rules do see a degradation in perf about 20-30ns overhead compared to the former O(n) simply because iterating over 10 rules can be performant, but when taking into the bigger picture and if we want to route maybe lots and lots of different rules then BART is a good choice.

Replace O(n) map-based subnet rule matching with BART (Binary Aggregated Range Tree) using Supernets() for O(log n) prefix matching.

Performance improvements:
- 1.3x faster for large rule sets (1000+ rules)
- 39x faster for no-match cases (critical for firewall/security)
- 1.9x faster for adding rules
- Better scaling characteristics

Trade-offs:
- Small rule sets (10-100): 1.2-1.4x slower for matches (20-30ns overhead)
- Large rule sets (1000+): 1.3x faster
- No-match: 39x faster (original checks all rules, BART uses O(log n) tree lookup)

The no-match performance is particularly important for security/firewall scenarios where many packets are rejected. BART can determine 'no match' in ~7 tree operations vs checking all 100+ rules.

Dependencies:
- Added: github.com/gaissmai/bart v0.26.0

Files:
- netstack2/subnet_lookup.go: New BART-based implementation
- netstack2/proxy.go: Removed old map-based implementation, updated to use BART
- Fix prefix canonicalization: use Masked() to handle host bits correctly
  (e.g., 10.0.0.5/24 and 10.0.0.0/24 are now treated as equal)
- Fix empty trie cleanup: use BART's Size() method to check if trie is empty
  instead of relying on rules slice length, preventing stale entries
- Fix go.mod: move BART from indirect to direct dependencies

These fixes ensure proper bookkeeping and prevent memory leaks from
empty tries hanging around after rule removal.
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