Ethernet switch device driver model (switchdev) =============================================== Copyright (c) 2014 Jiri Pirko Copyright (c) 2014-2015 Scott Feldman The Ethernet switch device driver model (switchdev) is an in-kernel driver model for switch devices which offload the forwarding (data) plane from the kernel. Figure 1 is a block diagram showing the components of the switchdev model for an example setup using a data-center-class switch ASIC chip. Other setups with SR-IOV or soft switches, such as OVS, are possible.                              User-space tools                                                                                                                        user space                   |                                                +-------------------------------------------------------------------+           kernel                       | Netlink                                                                      |                                                               +--------------+-------------------------------+                               |         Network stack                        |                               |           (Linux)                            |                               |                                              |                               +----------------------------------------------+                                                                                         sw1p2 sw1p4 sw1p6                       sw1p1  + sw1p3 +  sw1p5 +         eth1                                      +    |    +    |    +    |            +                                        |    |    |    |    |    |            |                                     +--+----+----+----+-+--+----+---+  +-----+-----+                               |         Switch driver         |  |    mgmt   |                               |        (this document)        |  |   driver  |                               |                               |  |           |                               +--------------+----------------+  +-----------+                                              |                                                 kernel                       | HW bus (eg PCI)                                +-------------------------------------------------------------------+           hardware                     |                                                               +--------------+---+------------+                                              |         Switch device (sw1)   |                                              |  +----+                       +--------+                                     |  |    v offloaded data path   | mgmt port                                    |  |    |                       |                                              +--|----|----+----+----+----+---+                                                 |    |    |    |    |    |                                                     +    +    +    +    +    +                                                    p1   p2   p3   p4   p5   p6                                                                      front-panel ports                                                                                                                Fig 1. Include Files ------------- #include #include Configuration ------------- Use "depends NET_SWITCHDEV" in driver's Kconfig to ensure switchdev model support is built for driver. Switch Ports ------------ On switchdev driver initialization, the driver will allocate and register a struct net_device (using register_netdev()) for each enumerated physical switch port, called the port netdev. A port netdev is the software representation of the physical port and provides a conduit for control traffic to/from the controller (the kernel) and the network, as well as an anchor point for higher level constructs such as bridges, bonds, VLANs, tunnels, and L3 routers. Using standard netdev tools (iproute2, ethtool, etc), the port netdev can also provide to the user access to the physical properties of the switch port such as PHY link state and I/O statistics. There is (currently) no higher-level kernel object for the switch beyond the port netdevs. All of the switchdev driver ops are netdev ops or switchdev ops. A switch management port is outside the scope of the switchdev driver model. Typically, the management port is not participating in offloaded data plane and is loaded with a different driver, such as a NIC driver, on the management port device. Port Netdev Naming ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Udev rules should be used for port netdev naming, using some unique attribute of the port as a key, for example the port MAC address or the port PHYS name. Hard-coding of kernel netdev names within the driver is discouraged; let the kernel pick the default netdev name, and let udev set the final name based on a port attribute. Using port PHYS name (ndo_get_phys_port_name) for the key is particularly useful for dynamically-named ports where the device names its ports based on external configuration. For example, if a physical 40G port is split logically into 4 10G ports, resulting in 4 port netdevs, the device can give a unique name for each port using port PHYS name. The udev rule would be: SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVER="", ATTR{phys_port_name}!="", \ NAME="$attr{phys_port_name}" Suggested naming convention is "swXpYsZ", where X is the switch name or ID, Y is the port name or ID, and Z is the sub-port name or ID. For example, sw1p1s0 would be sub-port 0 on port 1 on switch 1. Switch ID ^^^^^^^^^ The switchdev driver must implement the switchdev op switchdev_port_attr_get for SWITCHDEV_ATTR_PORT_PARENT_ID for each port netdev, returning the same physical ID for each port of a switch. The ID must be unique between switches on the same system. The ID does not need to be unique between switches on different systems. The switch ID is used to locate ports on a switch and to know if aggregated ports belong to the same switch. Port Features ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ NETIF_F_NETNS_LOCAL If the switchdev driver (and device) only supports offloading of the default network namespace (netns), the driver should set this feature flag to prevent the port netdev from being moved out of the default netns. A netns-aware driver/device would not set this flag and be responsible for partitioning hardware to preserve netns containment. This means hardware cannot forward traffic from a port in one namespace to another port in another namespace. Port Topology ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The port netdevs representing the physical switch ports can be organized into higher-level switching constructs. The default construct is a standalone router port, used to offload L3 forwarding. Two or more ports can be bonded together to form a LAG. Two or more ports (or LAGs) can be bridged to bridge L2 networks. VLANs can be applied to sub-divide L2 networks. L2-over-L3 tunnels can be built on ports. These constructs are built using standard Linux tools such as the bridge driver, the bonding/team drivers, and netlink-based tools such as iproute2. The switchdev driver can know a particular port's position in the topology by monitoring NETDEV_CHANGEUPPER notifications. For example, a port moved into a bond will see it's upper master change. If that bond is moved into a bridge, the bond's upper master will change. And so on. The driver will track such movements to know what position a port is in in the overall topology by registering for netdevice events and acting on NETDEV_CHANGEUPPER. L2 Forwarding Offload --------------------- The idea is to offload the L2 data forwarding (switching) path from the kernel to the switchdev device by mirroring bridge FDB entries down to the device. An FDB entry is the {port, MAC, VLAN} tuple forwarding destination. To offloading L2 bridging, the switchdev driver/device should support: - Static FDB entries installed on a bridge port - Notification of learned/forgotten src mac/vlans from device - STP state changes on the port - VLAN flooding of multicast/broadcast and unknown unicast packets Static FDB Entries ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The switchdev driver should implement ndo_fdb_add, ndo_fdb_del and ndo_fdb_dump to support static FDB entries installed to the device. Static bridge FDB entries are installed, for example, using iproute2 bridge cmd: bridge fdb add ADDR dev DEV [vlan VID] [self] The driver should use the helper switchdev_port_fdb_xxx ops for ndo_fdb_xxx ops, and handle add/delete/dump of SWITCHDEV_OBJ_PORT_FDB object using switchdev_port_obj_xxx ops. XXX: what should be done if offloading this rule to hardware fails (for example, due to full capacity in hardware tables) ? Note: by default, the bridge does not filter on VLAN and only bridges untagged traffic. To enable VLAN support, turn on VLAN filtering: echo 1 >/sys/class/net//bridge/vlan_filtering Notification of Learned/Forgotten Source MAC/VLANs ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The switch device will learn/forget source MAC address/VLAN on ingress packets and notify the switch driver of the mac/vlan/port tuples. The switch driver, in turn, will notify the bridge driver using the switchdev notifier call: err = call_switchdev_notifiers(val, dev, info); Where val is SWITCHDEV_FDB_ADD when learning and SWITCHDEV_FDB_DEL when forgetting, and info points to a struct switchdev_notifier_fdb_info. On SWITCHDEV_FDB_ADD, the bridge driver will install the FDB entry into the bridge's FDB and mark the entry as NTF_EXT_LEARNED. The iproute2 bridge command will label these entries "offload": $ bridge fdb 52:54:00:12:35:01 dev sw1p1 master br0 permanent 00:02:00:00:02:00 dev sw1p1 master br0 offload 00:02:00:00:02:00 dev sw1p1 self 52:54:00:12:35:02 dev sw1p2 master br0 permanent 00:02:00:00:03:00 dev sw1p2 master br0 offload 00:02:00:00:03:00 dev sw1p2 self 33:33:00:00:00:01 dev eth0 self permanent 01:00:5e:00:00:01 dev eth0 self permanent 33:33:ff:00:00:00 dev eth0 self permanent 01:80:c2:00:00:0e dev eth0 self permanent 33:33:00:00:00:01 dev br0 self permanent 01:00:5e:00:00:01 dev br0 self permanent 33:33:ff:12:35:01 dev br0 self permanent Learning on the port should be disabled on the bridge using the bridge command: bridge link set dev DEV learning off Learning on the device port should be enabled, as well as learning_sync: bridge link set dev DEV learning on self bridge link set dev DEV learning_sync on self Learning_sync attribute enables syncing of the learned/forgotton FDB entry to the bridge's FDB. It's possible, but not optimal, to enable learning on the device port and on the bridge port, and disable learning_sync. To support learning and learning_sync port attributes, the driver implements switchdev op switchdev_port_attr_get/set for SWITCHDEV_ATTR_PORT_BRIDGE_FLAGS. The driver should initialize the attributes to the hardware defaults. FDB Ageing ^^^^^^^^^^ There are two FDB ageing models supported: 1) ageing by the device, and 2) ageing by the kernel. Ageing by the device is preferred if many FDB entries are supported. The driver calls call_switchdev_notifiers(SWITCHDEV_FDB_DEL, ...) to age out the FDB entry. In this model, ageing by the kernel should be turned off. XXX: how to turn off ageing in kernel on a per-port basis or otherwise prevent the kernel from ageing out the FDB entry? In the kernel ageing model, the standard bridge ageing mechanism is used to age out stale FDB entries. To keep an FDB entry "alive", the driver should refresh the FDB entry by calling call_switchdev_notifiers(SWITCHDEV_FDB_ADD, ...). The notification will reset the FDB entry's last-used time to now. The driver should rate limit refresh notifications, for example, no more than once a second. If the FDB entry expires, fdb_delete is called to remove entry from the device. STP State Change on Port ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Internally or with a third-party STP protocol implementation (e.g. mstpd), the bridge driver maintains the STP state for ports, and will notify the switch driver of STP state change on a port using the switchdev op switchdev_attr_port_set for SWITCHDEV_ATTR_PORT_STP_UPDATE. State is one of BR_STATE_*. The switch driver can use STP state updates to update ingress packet filter list for the port. For example, if port is DISABLED, no packets should pass, but if port moves to BLOCKED, then STP BPDUs and other IEEE 01:80:c2:xx:xx:xx link-local multicast packets can pass. Note that STP BDPUs are untagged and STP state applies to all VLANs on the port so packet filters should be applied consistently across untagged and tagged VLANs on the port. Flooding L2 domain ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ For a given L2 VLAN domain, the switch device should flood multicast/broadcast and unknown unicast packets to all ports in domain, if allowed by port's current STP state. The switch driver, knowing which ports are within which vlan L2 domain, can program the switch device for flooding. The packet should also be sent to the port netdev for processing by the bridge driver. The bridge should not reflood the packet to the same ports the device flooded. XXX: the mechanism to avoid duplicate flood packets is being discuseed. It is possible for the switch device to not handle flooding and push the packets up to the bridge driver for flooding. This is not ideal as the number of ports scale in the L2 domain as the device is much more efficient at flooding packets that software. IGMP Snooping ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ XXX: complete this section L3 Routing Offload ------------------ Offloading L3 routing requires that device be programmed with FIB entries from the kernel, with the device doing the FIB lookup and forwarding. The device does a longest prefix match (LPM) on FIB entries matching route prefix and forwards the packet to the matching FIB entry's nexthop(s) egress ports. To program the device, the driver implements support for SWITCHDEV_OBJ_IPV[4|6]_FIB object using switchdev_port_obj_xxx ops. switchdev_port_obj_add is used for both adding a new FIB entry to the device, or modifying an existing entry on the device. XXX: Currently, only SWITCHDEV_OBJ_IPV4_FIB objects are supported. SWITCHDEV_OBJ_IPV4_FIB object passes: struct switchdev_obj_ipv4_fib { /* IPV4_FIB */ u32 dst; int dst_len; struct fib_info *fi; u8 tos; u8 type; u32 nlflags; u32 tb_id; } ipv4_fib; to add/modify/delete IPv4 dst/dest_len prefix on table tb_id. The *fi structure holds details on the route and route's nexthops. *dev is one of the port netdevs mentioned in the routes next hop list. If the output port netdevs referenced in the route's nexthop list don't all have the same switch ID, the driver is not called to add/modify/delete the FIB entry. Routes offloaded to the device are labeled with "offload" in the ip route listing: $ ip route show default via 192.168.0.2 dev eth0 11.0.0.0/30 dev sw1p1 proto kernel scope link src 11.0.0.2 offload 11.0.0.4/30 via 11.0.0.1 dev sw1p1 proto zebra metric 20 offload 11.0.0.8/30 dev sw1p2 proto kernel scope link src 11.0.0.10 offload 11.0.0.12/30 via 11.0.0.9 dev sw1p2 proto zebra metric 20 offload 12.0.0.2 proto zebra metric 30 offload nexthop via 11.0.0.1 dev sw1p1 weight 1 nexthop via 11.0.0.9 dev sw1p2 weight 1 12.0.0.3 via 11.0.0.1 dev sw1p1 proto zebra metric 20 offload 12.0.0.4 via 11.0.0.9 dev sw1p2 proto zebra metric 20 offload 192.168.0.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.0.15 XXX: add/mod/del IPv6 FIB API Nexthop Resolution ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The FIB entry's nexthop list contains the nexthop tuple (gateway, dev), but for the switch device to forward the packet with the correct dst mac address, the nexthop gateways must be resolved to the neighbor's mac address. Neighbor mac address discovery comes via the ARP (or ND) process and is available via the arp_tbl neighbor table. To resolve the routes nexthop gateways, the driver should trigger the kernel's neighbor resolution process. See the rocker driver's rocker_port_ipv4_resolve() for an example. The driver can monitor for updates to arp_tbl using the netevent notifier NETEVENT_NEIGH_UPDATE. The device can be programmed with resolved nexthops for the routes as arp_tbl updates.