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Message-ID: <1328834349.14661.3.camel@oc1677441337.ibm.com>
Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:39:09 -0800
From: Sridhar Samudrala <sri@...ibm.com>
To: John Fastabend <john.r.fastabend@...el.com>
Cc: bhutchings@...arflare.com, roprabhu@...co.com,
netdev@...r.kernel.org, mst@...hat.com, chrisw@...hat.com,
davem@...emloft.net, gregory.v.rose@...el.com,
shemminger@...tta.com, kvm@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH v0 1/2] net: bridge: propagate FDB table into
hardware
On Thu, 2012-02-09 at 12:30 -0800, John Fastabend wrote:
> On 2/9/2012 10:14 AM, Sridhar Samudrala wrote:
> > On Wed, 2012-02-08 at 19:22 -0800, John Fastabend wrote:
> >> Propagate software FDB table into hardware uc, mc lists when
> >> the NETIF_F_HW_FDB is set.
> >>
> >> This resolves the case below where an embedded switch is used
> >> in hardware to do inter-VF or VF-PF switching. This patch
> >> pushes the FDB entry (specifically the MAC address) into the
> >> embedded switch with dev_add_uc and dev_add_mc so the switch
> >> "learns" about the software bridge.
> >>
> >>
> >> veth0 veth2
> >> | |
> >> ------------
> >> | bridge0 | <---- software bridging
> >> ------------
> >> /
> >> /
> >> ethx.y ethx
> >> VF PF
> >> \ \ <---- propagate FDB entries to HW
> >> \ \
> >> --------------------
> >> | Embedded Bridge | <---- hardware offloaded switching
> >> --------------------
> >>
> >
> > This scenario works now as adding an interface to a bridge puts it in
> > promiscuous mode. So adding a PF to a software bridge should not be
> > a problem as it supports promiscuous mode. But adding a VF will not
> > work.
>
> It shouldn't work because the embedded bridge will lookup the address
> in its FDB and when it doesn't match any unicast filters it will forward
> the packet onto the wire. Because the veth0 and veth2 above never get
> inserted into the embedded brdige's FDB the packets will _never_ get
> routed there.
>
> That said the current 'ixgbe' driver is doing something broken in that
> it is always setting the unicast hash table and mirroring bits to 1. So
> if you think this is working your seeing a bug where packets are being
> sent onto the wire AND upto the PF. Packets with destination addresses
> matching veth1 should not end up on the wire and vice versa. This is
> specific to ixgbe and is not the case for other SR-IOV devices.
OK. Is this behavior going to be fixed.
>
> This causes some issues (a) has some very real performance implications,
> (b) at this point you have some strange behavior from my point of view.
> The embedded bridge is not a learning bridge nor is it acting like an
> 802.1Q VEB or VEPA.
>
> >
> > Are you trying to avoid the requirement of having to put the interface
> > in promiscuous mode when adding to a bridge?
> >
>
> I think the bridge being in promiscuous mode is correct.
The interface that is added to the bridge is put in promiscuous mode,
not the bridge itself. In this example, i assumed that setting
promiscuous on PF is putting the embedded bridge in learning mode.
Thanks
Sridhar
>
> Hope that helps sorry its a bit long winded.
> John
>
>
>
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