netdev - Re: [PATCH net-next v2 03/22] ovpn: add basic netlink support

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Message-ID: <f5906a82-36f5-4e9a-8fca-d8bc65ca5fff@openvpn.net>
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2024 01:01:56 +0100
From: Antonio Quartulli <antonio@...nvpn.net>
To: Andrew Lunn <andrew@...n.ch>
Cc: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
 Sergey Ryazanov <ryazanov.s.a@...il.com>, Paolo Abeni <pabeni@...hat.com>,
 Eric Dumazet <edumazet@...gle.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next v2 03/22] ovpn: add basic netlink support

On 06/03/2024 20:10, Andrew Lunn wrote:
>>>> Right, so this in general makes sense. The only question i have now
>>>> is, should you be using rtnl_link_stats64. That is the standard
>>>> structure for interface statistics.
>>
>> @Andrew: do you see how I could return/send this object per-peer to
>> userspace?
>> I think the whole interface stats logic is based on the one-stats-per-device
>> concept. Hence, I thought it was meaningful to just send my own stats via
>> netlink.
> 
> Ah, interesting. I never looked at the details for
> rtnl_link_stats64. It is buried in the middle of ifinfo. So not very
> reusable :-(
> 
> Idea #2:
> 
> A peer is not that different to an interface queue. Jakub recently
> posted some code for that:
> 
> https://lwn.net/ml/netdev/20240229010221.2408413-2-kuba@kernel.org/
> 
> Maybe there are ideas you can borrow from there.
> 
> But lets look at this from another direction. What are the use cases
> for these statistics? Does the userspace daemon need them, e.g. to
> detect a peer which is idle and should be disconnected? Are they
> exported via an SNMP MIB?

Yes, they are used by userspace. Main usecases are:
* inactivity timeout (if configured, when less than N bytes are 
transferred in a given time the client will be disconnected)
* stats reporting during connection (during the life of a peer, stats 
can be periodically pulled by the user for reporting purposes)
* stats reporting at disconnection (stats are pulled upon disconnection 
in order to report the total traffic related to a peer)

These stats can be reported via a status file or via the "management 
interface" (an interactive interface that can be used to issue live 
commands to a running openvpn daemon).

How this data is actually used is up to the user.

Regards,

> 
> 	Andrew
> 

-- 
Antonio Quartulli
OpenVPN Inc.