netdev - Why do we need tasklet in IFB?

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:   Fri, 28 Oct 2016 14:36:27 -0700
From:   Michael Ma <make0818@...il.com>
To:     Linux Kernel Network Developers <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Why do we need tasklet in IFB?

Hi -

Currently IFB uses tasklet to process tx/rx on the interface that
forwarded the packet to IFB. My understanding on why we're doing this
is that since dev_queue_xmit() can be invoked in interrupt, we want to
defer the processing of original tx/rx in case ifb_xmit() is called
from interrupt.

However, if the packet is originally from rx, calling context should
already be a tasklet and there is no need to queue the processing to
another tasklet anymore. Even if the packet is originated from tx, we
can rely on the deferred processing of the "original device" or TC if
necessary. Did I miss anything here?

Furthermore, looking at the bonding device's code there isn't this
kind of buffering/tasklet handling for packet forwarding even though
bond also has its own txq/rxq configured separately from the actual
nic, which is very similar to IFB.

So why do we need tasklet in IFB?

Thanks,
Michael