[ovs-dev] [PATCH] docs: Document that hw-offload is experimental.

[Joe Stringer]

On 15 June 2017 at 16:36, Joe Stringer <joe at ovn.org> wrote:
> Currently, the set of flows that may be offloaded is very small compared
> to the overall capabilities of the OpenFlow support in OVS. In the
> majority of cases, if a user attempts to enable this flag they are
> unlikely to observe a performance increase, because for instance they
> lack the correct hardware; lack the correct kernel version; or their
> flow tables are too complex for the hardware to handle.
>
> To moderate expectations around this feature, describe it as
> experimental. Over time, we expect that the functionality and usefulness
> of this feature will grow and we should be in a better shape to revisit
> the status of this functionality after it has had some time to mature.
>
> Signed-off-by: Joe Stringer <joe at ovn.org>
> ---

Hi folks, this is a pretty high level description of some of the
limitations. I wonder if we could add another table to the FAQ
underneath the question "Are all features available with all
datapaths?" to answer the questions "Which features can be offloaded
to hardware?" and "Which hardware supports hardware offload"? It seems
to me like minimum to configure this stuff is 4.2, but various fields
are still being added to the matching side of this... then only a
small subset of actions can be offloaded.. then there's the question
of which kernels began to distribute drivers with support to offload
to particular NICs and switches. Could someone take a stab at
documenting this for users?