* Re: How to calculate ICMPv6 checksum?
2025-08-07 17:57 ` Stephen Hemminger
@ 2025-08-08 18:56 ` Gábor LENCSE
0 siblings, 0 replies; 3+ messages in thread
From: Gábor LENCSE @ 2025-08-08 18:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Stephen Hemminger; +Cc: users
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Dear Stephen,
Thank you very much for your answer. It helps me a lot, but I have
further questions. Please see my comments inline.
> The pseudo-header part is different.
If I understand it correctly, then it means that I need to write the
ICMPv6 checksum function myself. To that end, I reviewed the source code
of the "rte_ipv6_udptcp_cksum()" function so that I can learn from it.
However, I did not find where it differs from the one that I need. I
took the below source code from here:
https://doc.dpdk.org/api/rte__ip6_8h_source.html#l00610
rte_ipv6_udptcp_cksum(const struct rte_ipv6_hdr *ipv6_hdr, const void
*l4_hdr) { uint16_t cksum = __rte_ipv6_udptcp_cksum(ipv6_hdr, l4_hdr);
cksum = ~cksum; /* * Per RFC 768: If the computed checksum is zero for
UDP, * it is transmitted as all ones * (the equivalent in one's
complement arithmetic). */ if (cksum == 0 && ipv6_hdr->proto ==
IPPROTO_UDP) cksum = 0xffff; return cksum; } It is the highest level. It
calls an internal function and at the end it considers the protocol
number (with other words, the next header field of the IPv6 header) when
it handles UDP specific things, thus I think that this time it does not
cause any problem in the case of ICMPv6.
This is the source code of the internal function:
static inline uint16_t
__rte_ipv6_udptcp_cksum(const struct rte_ipv6_hdr *ipv6_hdr, const void
*l4_hdr)
{
uint32_t cksum;
uint32_t l4_len;
l4_len = rte_be_to_cpu_16(ipv6_hdr->payload_len);
cksum = rte_raw_cksum(l4_hdr, l4_len);
cksum += rte_ipv6_phdr_cksum(ipv6_hdr, 0);
cksum = ((cksum & 0xffff0000) >> 16) + (cksum & 0xffff);
return (uint16_t)cksum;
}
It calculates the checksum for the L4 part and also for the
pseudo-header separately. The latter could be different than what I need
for ICMPv6.
I also checked the source code of "rte_ipv6_phdr_cksum(ipv6_hdr, 0)",
please see it below the figure from RFC 2460.
> https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4443
>
> 2.3. Message Checksum Calculation
>
> The checksum is the 16-bit one's complement of the one's complement
> sum of the entire ICMPv6 message, starting with the ICMPv6 message
> type field, and prepended with a "pseudo-header" of IPv6 header
> fields, as specified in [IPv6, Section 8.1]. The Next Header value
> used in the pseudo-header is 58. (The inclusion of a pseudo-header
> in the ICMPv6 checksum is a change from IPv4; see [IPv6] for the
> rationale for this change.)
>
> For computing the checksum, the checksum field is first set to zero.
>
> https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2460#section-8.1
>
> 8.1 Upper-Layer Checksums
>
> Any transport or other upper-layer protocol that includes the
> addresses from the IP header in its checksum computation must be
> modified for use over IPv6, to include the 128-bit IPv6 addresses
> instead of 32-bit IPv4 addresses. In particular, the following
> illustration shows the TCP and UDP "pseudo-header" for IPv6:
>
> +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
> | |
> + +
> | |
> + Source Address +
> | |
> + +
> | |
> +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
> | |
> + +
> | |
> + Destination Address +
> | |
> + +
> | |
> +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
> | Upper-Layer Packet Length |
> +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
> | zero | Next Header |
> +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
So this is what I need. And it seems to me, that the below source code
does exactly the same:
static inline uint16_t
rte_ipv6_phdr_cksum(const struct rte_ipv6_hdr *ipv6_hdr, uint64_t ol_flags)
{
uint32_t sum;
struct {
rte_be32_t len; /* L4 length. */
rte_be32_t proto; /* L4 protocol - top 3 bytes must be zero */
} psd_hdr;
psd_hdr.proto = (uint32_t)(ipv6_hdr->proto << 24);
if (ol_flags & (RTE_MBUF_F_TX_TCP_SEG | RTE_MBUF_F_TX_UDP_SEG))
psd_hdr.len = 0;
else
psd_hdr.len = ipv6_hdr->payload_len;
sum = __rte_raw_cksum(&ipv6_hdr->src_addr,
sizeof(ipv6_hdr->src_addr) + sizeof(ipv6_hdr->dst_addr),
0);
sum = __rte_raw_cksum(&psd_hdr, sizeof(psd_hdr), sum);
return __rte_raw_cksum_reduce(sum);
}
As required, it handles length field on 32 bits, and shifts the protocol
field (containing the value of 58) to the left by 24 bit, which means
the same as the "next header" field is at the topmost 8 bits of a 32 bit
number in the drawing.
Then it does a "trick" that it uses the source and destination IPv6
addresses from the IPv6 packet (likely to spare their copying).
Thus, I did not find anything what I would need to do differently.
However, on the other hand, _there should be something_, because I tried
using the "rte_ipv6_udptcp_cksum()" function (of course, I set the
checksum field to 0 before using it), but Wireshark said that the
checksum was incorrect. Both tshark and Wireshark decodes my NA message
perfectly, but the Linux kernel of the device under test does not accept
it, this is why it sends further NS messages.
This is a tshark capture on the device under test:
root@dut:~# tshark -i eno1
Running as user "root" and group "root". This could be dangerous.
Capturing on 'eno1'
1 0.000000000 fe80::baca:3aff:fe5e:25a8 → ff02::16 ICMPv6 170
Multicast Listener Report Message v2
2 0.379986848 fe80::baca:3aff:fe5e:25a8 → ff02::16 ICMPv6 170
Multicast Listener Report Message v2
3 4.156047617 2001:2::2 → 2001:2:0:8000::2 UDP 80 58488 → 27971
Len=18
4 4.156066982 fe80::baca:3aff:fe5e:25a8 → ff02::1:ff00:2 ICMPv6 86
Neighbor Solicitation for 2001:2::2 from b8:ca:3a:5e:25:a8
5 4.156092949 2001:2::2 → fe80::baca:3aff:fe5e:25a8 ICMPv6 86
Neighbor Advertisement 2001:2::2 (ovr) is at 24:6e:96:3c:3f:40
6 5.183987802 fe80::baca:3aff:fe5e:25a8 → ff02::1:ff00:2 ICMPv6 86
Neighbor Solicitation for 2001:2::2 from b8:ca:3a:5e:25:a8
7 5.184007499 2001:2::2 → fe80::baca:3aff:fe5e:25a8 ICMPv6 86
Neighbor Advertisement 2001:2::2 (ovr) is at 24:6e:96:3c:3f:40
8 6.203987286 fe80::baca:3aff:fe5e:25a8 → ff02::1:ff00:2 ICMPv6 86
Neighbor Solicitation for 2001:2::2 from b8:ca:3a:5e:25:a8
9 6.204007429 2001:2::2 → fe80::baca:3aff:fe5e:25a8 ICMPv6 86
Neighbor Advertisement 2001:2::2 (ovr) is at 24:6e:96:3c:3f:40
10 7.232005250 2001:2::1 → ff02::1:ff00:2 ICMPv6 86 Neighbor
Solicitation for 2001:2::2 from b8:ca:3a:5e:25:a8
11 8.251987771 fe80::baca:3aff:fe5e:25a8 → ff02::1:ff00:2 ICMPv6 86
Neighbor Solicitation for 2001:2::2 from b8:ca:3a:5e:25:a8
12 9.275986860 fe80::baca:3aff:fe5e:25a8 → ff02::1:ff00:2 ICMPv6 86
Neighbor Solicitation for 2001:2::2 from b8:ca:3a:5e:25:a8
And Wireshark says: "Checksum: 0x1baf incorrect, should be 0x035d".
Could you please advise me, what I could overlook?
Best regards,
Gábor
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