[ovs-dev] [PATCH net-next 00/22 v2] Lightweight & flow based encapsulation

[David Miller]

From: Thomas Graf <tgraf at suug.ch>
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2015 10:43:44 +0200

> This series combines the work previously posted by Roopa, Robert and
> myself. It's according to what we discussed at NFWS. The motivation
> of this series is to:
> 
>  * Consolidate code between OVS and the rest of the kernel and get
>    rid of OVS vports and instead represent them as pure net_devices.
>  * Introduce a lightweight tunneling mechanism which enables flow
>    based encapsulation to improve scalability on both RX and TX.
>  * Do the above in an encapsulation unspecific way so that the
>    encapsulation type is eventually abstracted away from the user.
>  * Use the same forwarding decision for both native forwarding and
>    encapsulation thus allowing to switch between native IPv6 and
>    UDP encapsulation based on endpoint without requiring additional
>    logic
> 
> The fundamental changes introduces in this series are:
>  * A new RTA_ENCAP Netlink attribute for routes carrying encapsulation
>    instructions. Depending on the specified type, the instructions
>    apply to UDP encapsulations, MPLS and possible other in the future.
>  * Depending on the encapsulation type, the output function of the
>    dst is directly overwritten or the dst merely attaches metadata and
>    relies on a subsequent net_device to apply it to the packet. The
>    latter is typically used if an inner and outer IP header exist which
>    require two subsequent routing lookups to be performed.
>  * A new metadata_dst structure which can be attached to skbs to
>    carry metadata in between subsystems. This new metadata transport
>    is used to provide a single interface for VXLAN, routing and OVS
>    to communicate through metadata.

Series applied, but please take Alexei's endianness feedback into
consideration.

Thanks!