netdev - [PATCH 3/3] docs: segmentation-offloads.txt: add SCTP info

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Date:   Wed, 14 Feb 2018 18:05:33 +1100
From:   Daniel Axtens <dja@...ens.net>
To:     netdev@...r.kernel.org
Cc:     Daniel Axtens <dja@...ens.net>,
        Marcelo Ricardo Leitner <marcelo.leitner@...il.com>
Subject: [PATCH 3/3] docs: segmentation-offloads.txt: add SCTP info

Most of this is extracted from 90017accff61 ("sctp: Add GSO support"),
with some extra text about GSO_BY_FRAGS and the need to check for it.

Cc: Marcelo Ricardo Leitner <marcelo.leitner@...il.com>
Signed-off-by: Daniel Axtens <dja@...ens.net>
---
 Documentation/networking/segmentation-offloads.txt | 26 ++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 26 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/networking/segmentation-offloads.txt b/Documentation/networking/segmentation-offloads.txt
index b247471a183c..d47480b61ac6 100644
--- a/Documentation/networking/segmentation-offloads.txt
+++ b/Documentation/networking/segmentation-offloads.txt
@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@ The following technologies are described:
  * Generic Segmentation Offload - GSO
  * Generic Receive Offload - GRO
  * Partial Generic Segmentation Offload - GSO_PARTIAL
+ * SCTP accelleration with GSO - GSO_BY_FRAGS
 
 TCP Segmentation Offload
 ========================
@@ -132,3 +133,28 @@ values for if the header was simply duplicated.  The one exception to this
 is the outer IPv4 ID field.  It is up to the device drivers to guarantee
 that the IPv4 ID field is incremented in the case that a given header does
 not have the DF bit set.
+
+SCTP accelleration with GSO
+===========================
+
+SCTP - despite the lack of hardware support - can still take advantage of
+GSO to pass one large packet through the network stack, rather than
+multiple small packets.
+
+This requires a different approach to other offloads, as SCTP packets
+cannot be just segmented to (P)MTU. Rather, the chunks must be contained in
+IP segments, padding respected. So unlike regular GSO, SCTP can't just
+generate a big skb, set gso_size to the fragmentation point and deliver it
+to IP layer.
+
+Instead, the SCTP protocol layer builds an skb with the segments correctly
+padded and stored as chained skbs, and skb_segment() splits based on those.
+To signal this, gso_size is set to the special value GSO_BY_FRAGS.
+
+Therefore, any code in the core networking stack must be aware of the
+possibility that gso_size will be GSO_BY_FRAGS and handle that case
+appropriately. (For size checks, the skb_gso_validate_*_len family of
+helpers do this automatically.)
+
+This also affects drivers with the NETIF_F_FRAGLIST & NETIF_F_GSO_SCTP bits
+set. Note also that NETIF_F_GSO_SCTP is included in NETIF_F_GSO_SOFTWARE.
-- 
2.14.1