Re: [dpdk-users] active_backup link bonding and mac address

[Kyle Larose <klarose@sandvine.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Declan Doherty [mailto:declan.doherty@intel.com]
> Sent: Friday, May 12, 2017 10:56 AM
> To: Kyle Larose; users@dpdk.org; dev@dpdk.org
> Subject: Re: active_backup link bonding and mac address
> 
> On 12/05/2017 3:31 PM, Kyle Larose wrote:
> > I'm adding the dev mailing list/link bonding maintainer, because I've done
> some more investigation and I'm beginning to think something is wrong.
> >
> 
> Kyle, sorry I didn't see the post in the users list. I think the issue is
> that the new primary is missing the bond MAC address on it's valid MACs
> list, hence it is dropping the ingress packets after a fail-over event,
> placing the all the slave devices into promiscuous mode as you suggest in
> option 2 would probably make the issue go away but I don't think it's the
> correct solution. I think we should just be adding the bond MAC to each
> slaves devices valid MAC list. As only one bond slave is only active at any
> time this won't cause any issues to the network, and will mean that fail
> over is transparent to your application and there is no need for MAC
> rewrites, which would invalidate existing ARP table entries at downstream
> end points.

Hey Declan,

Thanks for the prompt response.

I agree with your suggestion. Does this MAC list propagate to the slave NICs' hardware layers?
That is, even if a slave isn't in promiscuous mode, if it receives a frame addressed to any
MAC in its list, it will accept it and deliver it to the software? Or, does it mean we need to
put the slave into promiscuous mode, but filter any MACs not in its list (unless the bond
interface itself is in promiscuous mode)?

Thanks,

Kyle