[ovs-dev] [patch net-next v2 8/9] switchdev: introduce Netlink API

[Thomas Graf]

On 09/23/14 at 12:11am, Andy Gospodarek wrote:
> There are clearly some that are most interested in how an eSwitch on an
> SR-IOV capable NIC be controlled can provide traditional forwarding help
> as well as offload the various technologies they hope to terminate
> at/inside their endpoint (host/guest/container) -- Thomas's _simple_
> use-case demonstrates this. ;)  This is a logical extention/increase in
> functionality that is offered in many eSwitches that was previously
> hidden from the user with the first generation SR-IOV capable network
> devices on hosts/servers.

I think we can define this more broadly and state that providing RX
steering capabilities to identify a guest in the NIC allows to
directly map packets into a memory region shared between host and
guest. Not a new concept at all but the existing dMAC and VLAN rx
filtering is just too limiting. We require a programmable API with
support for encap and encryption. SR-IOV is a hardware assisted form
of that which can expedite the guest to guest path on a host.