[ovs-discuss] [ovs-dev] Regarding TSO using AF_PACKET in OVS

Ramana Reddy gtvrreddy at gmail.com
Thu Sep 19 09:16:05 UTC 2019


Hi William,
Thanks for your reply. Please find the inline comments.

On Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 9:26 PM William Tu <u9012063 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Ramana,
>
> I'm trying to understand your setup.
>
> On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 4:11 AM Ramana Reddy <gtvrreddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Ben, Justin, Jesse and All,
> >
> > Hope everyone doing great.
> >
> > During my work, I create a socket using AF_PACKET with virtio_net_hdr and
> > filled all the fields in the virtio_net_hdr
> > and the flag to VIRTIO_NET_GSO_TCPV4 to enable TSO using af_packet.
> >
> > vnet->gso_type = VIRTIO_NET_HDR_GSO_TCPV4;
> >
> > The code is not working when I am trying to send large packets over OVS
> > VXLAN tunnel. It's dropping the large packets and
> > the application is resending the MTU sized packets. The code is working
> > fine in non ovs case (directly sending without ovs).
>
> Do you create AF_PACKET and bind its socket to OVS's vxlan device,
> ex: vxlan_sys_4789?
>
No. We created a AF_PACKET and binding it our own interface in the
container. It takes the help of the routing table in the container
and routes the packets to the OVS veth interface, and from there, the OVS
rule selects the respective out_port  based on the destination IP address.
We can't select  vxlan_sys_4789 interface as it is in the host namespace.
It's up to the OVS  to select the respective interface (out_port).
And we are not aware and need not know about the underlying network (OVS
bridge or linux or some docker bridge) in the host.

In the non-ovs working case, do you bind AF_PACKET to the vxlan device
> created
> by using ip link command?
>
> >
> > I understood that UDP tunneling offloading (VXLAN) not happening because
> of
> > nic may not support this offloading feature,
> > but when I send iperf (AF_INET) traffic, though the offloading is not
> > happening, but the large packets are fragmented and the
> > VXLAN tunneling sending the fragmented packets.  Why are we seeing this
> > different behavior?
>
> OVS's vxlan device is a light-weight tunnel device, so it might not
> have all the
> features.
>
This is the same question in my mind. OVS may not be handling AF_PACKET
with vnet_hdr.

>
> >
> > What is the expected behavior in AF_PACKET in OVS? Does OVS support
> > AF_PACKET offloading mechanism?
>
> AF_PACKET (see net/packet/af_packet.c) just from userspace send packet into
> kernel and to the device you bind to.  It creates skb and invokes the
> device's xmit
> function.
>
This I understood. But OVS should understand this and offload the packet to
the driver or to the nic
when virtio_net_hdr is set. If we send the packets to the normal interface
(eth0) without ovs, the kernel
is able to understand the TSO packets with virtio_net_hdr and handover the
offloading to the driver (GSO) or nic (TSO).

>
> William
>
> > If not, how we can avoid the retransmission of the packets. What are
> things
> > to be done so that the kernel fragments
> > large packets and send them out without dropping ( in case if offloading
> > feature not available)?
> >
> > Looking forward to your reply.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Ramana
> > _______________________________________________
> > dev mailing list
> > dev at openvswitch.org
> > https://mail.openvswitch.org/mailman/listinfo/ovs-dev
>
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