netdev - Cannot send unicast Ethernet Frame from tap0 to tap1 via bridge

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Message-ID: <CAPRaSD6LX4BP51u0kJ6r7OEQHPyykrS+9we9bK6GnB3hbWRAVQ@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Thu, 14 Nov 2013 12:09:52 +0100
From:	Albert Krenz <albert.krenz87@...glemail.com>
To:	netdev@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Cannot send unicast Ethernet Frame from tap0 to tap1 via bridge

Hello together,
i am experiencing a strange behaviour in a bridge which bridges two
tap Interfaces (namely tap0 and tap1) that are generated by two
C-Applications.

It looks like the following:

     +------------------------+
     +-----------------------+
      |                         |
        |                        |
      |   Application 1   | ------- tap0 ----- br1 ---- tap1 ----- |
Application 2   |
      |                         |
        |                        |
     +------------------------+
     +-----------------------+

Application 1 creates tap0 and Application 2 creates tap1. The
creation of the devices is done like in
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/tuntap.txt
Both Applications acces their respective tap-device via File-IO. The
bridge should bridge the network devices of both tap's.

Here are the MAC-addresses of both tap devices (they only differ in
the last byte):
 tap0: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:B4
 tap1: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:B3

What i want to accomplish is sending an Ethernet Frame (Layer 2, so no
IP Frames) from Application 1 to Application 2 and vice versa.
Therefore i am periodically (1 time per second) writing a Frame with
Dst-addr. of tap1 and Src-addr. of tap0 and vice-versa, to the
File-descriptor of the respectiv tap-device.
I can now check the traversing of the Frame via Wireshark from tap0 to
br1, but it never gets to tap1 and therefore Application 2 never
receives a Frame. Also in the other direction the Frames never pass
through br1 but get stuck.

If i am not using the MAC-addr. of the TAP Devices but a random
unknown Dst-addr like XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:F0 (MAC address not known in the
bridge) it works like a charm and the Frame passes through the bridge
and is received by Application 1 or Application 2.
The same goes for Broadcast/Multicast addresses.

I then tried disabling network Filtering via:
 echo 0 > bridge-nf-call-arptables
 echo 0 > bridge-nf-call-iptables
 echo 0 > bridge-nf-call-ip6tables
but this didn't do the trick.

What also did not work was setting tap0/tap1/br1 into promiscuous
mode. Maybe i first have to add a routing rule via ebtables? I have
tried:
    ebtables - A FORWARD -i br1 -o br1 -j ACCEPT
which i found on the internet and did also not work.

My Questions is now: is it possible to bridge two tap devices to send
RAW Ethernet Frames between two Applications? I think this should work
cause it is similar to an KVM/QEMU setup where multiple Virtual Guest
OS's are also able to communicate between each other (via IP frames).
So does anyone have an idea what i am missing?

Greetings
Albert Krenz
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