[NETWORK MODULE PERFORMANCE]: How to measure it?

[Radivoje Todorovic]

Hello,

I am confronted with somewhat hard problem. Say one develops Network Module
X, i.e. using Netfilter hooks. X will (simply) mangle the packets and then
forward them or do whatever. How can I measure the performance of X module?
I am not sure exactly what I am asking but say, I have a Linux router with X
module running and I need to get information what is the CPU usage under
heavy traffic with, and without X module. Actually it would be nice to see
the latency per-packet that X introduces and how it changes if the volume of
traffic increases.

Any hint would be highly appreciated.

Rade