Re: [dpdk-dev] [RFC PATCH 0/3] introduce IF proxy library

[Jerin Jacob <jerinjacobk@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jan 15, 2020 at 3:45 PM Bruce Richardson
<bruce.richardson@intel.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 06:38:37PM +0100, Andrzej Ostruszka wrote:
> > On 1/14/20 4:16 PM, Morten Brřrup wrote:
> > > Andrzej,
> >
> > Hello Morten
> >
> > > Basically you are adding a very small subset of the Linux IP stack> to interface with DPDK applications via callbacks.
> >
> > Yes, at the moment this is limited - we'd prefer first to solicit
> > some input from community.
> >
> > > The library also seems to support interfacing to the route table,
> > > so it is not "interface proxy" but "IP stack proxy".
> >
> > True, to some extent - for example you can bring the interface up and
> > down which has nothing to do with IP stack.  As for the name of the
> > library - that is actually part where we are completely open.  The proxy
> > represents port (thus the name) but that is not all, so any better name
> > proposals are welcome.
> >
> > > You already mention ARP table as future work. How about namespaces,
> > > ip tables, and other advanced features... I foresee the Devil in the
> > > details for any real use case.
> >
> > Right now I don't know what other things are needed.  This idea is still
> > early.  However imagine you'd like to use DPDK to speed up packet
> > processing of IP stack - would you like to implement all the protocols
> > that are needed?  Or just let the system handle the control path and
> > handle the data path and sniff the control params from the system.
> >
> Like Morten, I'd be a bit concerned at the possible scope of the work if we
> start pulling in functionality from the IP stack like ARP etc. To avoid
> this becoming a massive effort, how useful would it be if we just limited
> the scope to physical NIC setup only, and did not do anything above the l2
> layer?

Like the IPSec library, Marvell would like to add support for
additional protocols
(probably begin with IPv4, UDP) to DPDK. One of our concerns was the control
plane interface for those protocols for effective use in DPDK. Since DPDK has
support for FreeBSD and Windows OS now, We can not use NETLINK directly
in the library. This is the sole intention of this library was the
abstract control
plane interface. We can start with only the L2 layer for now
and but in the future when we add the L3 layer then we need to add the
additional items.
Suggestions?