Date:   Fri, 20 Apr 2018 20:11:22 -0700
From:   Tushar Dave <tushar.n.dave@...cle.com>
To:     Alexander Duyck <alexander.duyck@...il.com>
Cc:     David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
        Sowmini Varadhan <sowmini.varadhan@...cle.com>,
        Willem de Bruijn <willemdebruijn.kernel@...il.com>,
        "Samudrala, Sridhar" <sridhar.samudrala@...el.com>,
        Netdev <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
        Willem de Bruijn <willemb@...gle.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC net-next 00/11] udp gso



On 04/20/2018 01:08 PM, Alexander Duyck wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 20, 2018 at 11:27 AM, Tushar Dave <tushar.n.dave@...cle.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 04/18/2018 11:12 AM, Alexander Duyck wrote:
>>>
>>> On Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 10:28 AM, David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> From: Sowmini Varadhan <sowmini.varadhan@...cle.com>
>>>> Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2018 08:31:03 -0400
>>>>
>>>>> However, I share Sridhar's concerns about the very fundamental change
>>>>> to UDP message boundary semantics here.  There is actually no such thing
>>>>> as a "segment" in udp, so in general this feature makes me a little
>>>>> uneasy.  Well behaved udp applications should already be sending mtu
>>>>> sized datagrams. And the not-so-well-behaved ones are probably relying
>>>>> on IP fragmentation/reassembly to take care of datagram boundary
>>>>> semantics
>>>>> for them?
>>>>>
>>>>> As Sridhar points out, the feature is not really "negotiated" - one side
>>>>> unilaterally sets the option. If the receiver is a classic/POSIX UDP
>>>>> implementation, it will have no way of knowing that message boundaries
>>>>> have been re-adjusted at the sender.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> There are no "semantics".
>>>>
>>>> What ends up on the wire is the same before the kernel/app changes as
>>>> afterwards.
>>>>
>>>> The only difference is that instead of the application doing N - 1
>>>> sendmsg() calls with mtu sized writes, it's giving everything all at
>>>> once and asking the kernel to segment.
>>>>
>>>> It even gives the application control over the size of the packets,
>>>> which I think is completely prudent in this situation.
>>>
>>>
>>> My only concern with the patch set is verifying what mitigations are
>>> in case so that we aren't trying to set an MSS size that results in a
>>> frame larger than MTU. I'm still digging through the code and trying
>>> to grok it, but I figured I might just put the question out there to
>>> may my reviewing easier.
>>>
>>> Also any plans for HW offload support for this? I vaguely recall that
>>> the igb and ixgbe parts had support for something like this in
>>> hardware. I would have to double check to see what exactly is
>>> supported.
>>
>>
>> Alex,
>>
>> If by HW support you meant UFO (UDP Fragmentation Offload), then I have
>> dig into that last year using ixgbe. And I found that Intel 10G HW does
>> break large UDP packets into MTU size however it does not generate
>> *true* IP fragments. Instead, when large (> MTU) size UDP packet is
>> given to NIC, HW generates unique UDP packets with distinct IP
>> fragments. This makes it impossible for receiving station to reassemble
>> them into one UDP packet.
>>
>> I am not sure about igb!
>>
>> -Tushar
> 
> Tushar,
> 
> I am not sure you have been following this thread, but this is about
> adding UDP GSO support, not fragmentation offload. With GSO support
> the UDP frames are not expected to be reassembled they are meant to be
> handled as individual frames.
> 
> What you have described is why I am interested. This patch set adds
> support for GSO segmentation, not fragmentation.
I see. Never mind.
Thanks.

-Tushar
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> - Alex
> 

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