[ovs-dev] [patch net-next RFC 03/12] net: introduce generic switch devices support

Florian Fainelli f.fainelli at gmail.com
Sat Aug 23 01:02:10 UTC 2014


2014-08-22 5:56 GMT-07:00 Jiri Pirko <jiri at resnulli.us>:
> Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 02:42:04PM CEST, jhs at mojatatu.com wrote:
>>On 08/21/14 13:05, Florian Fainelli wrote:
>>>2014-08-21 9:18 GMT-07:00 Jiri Pirko <jiri at resnulli.us>:
>>>>The goal of this is to provide a possibility to suport various switch
>>>>chips. Drivers should implement relevant ndos to do so. Now there is a
>>>>couple of ndos defines:
>>>>- for getting physical switch id is in place.
>>>>- for work with flows.
>>>>
>>>>Note that user can use random port netdevice to access the switch.
>>>
>>>I read through this patch set, and I still think that DSA is the
>>>generic switch infrastructure we already have because it does provide
>>>the following:
>>>
>>>- taking a generic platform data structure (C struct or Device Tree),
>>>validate, parse it and map it to internal kernel structures
>>>- instantiate per-port network devices based on the configuration data provided
>>>- delegate netdev_ops to the switch driver and/or the CPU NIC when relevant
>>>- provide support for hooking RX and TX traffic coming from the CPU NIC
>>>
>>>I would rather we build on the existing DSA infrastructure and add the
>>>flow-related netdev_ops rather than having the two remain in
>>>disconnect while flow-oriented switches driver get progressively
>>>added. I guess I should take a closer look at the rocker driver to see
>>>how hard would that be for you.
>>>
>>>What do you think?
>>
>>
>>I thought we had concluded that DSA was a good path forward?  Or maybe at
>>this stage we need to have several alternative approaches
>>and we eventually converge?
>
> That is true. I'm still unsure how to fit this on to DSA or how to change DSA
> the way this fits. This is my quest now. Will report back in a week or so.

I don't want to hold off this patch series, so let's proceed with your
submission, since I believe John Fastabend would also directly benefit
from this.

In the meantime, I will keep working on DSA, and prototype changes
with the rocker driver.

Once we are confident we have bridged the gap, we can unify things.
How does that sound?
-- 
Florian



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