RE: [RFC PATCH net-next 1/1] net: Support for switch port configuration

[Varlese, Marco]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thomas Graf [mailto:tgr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Thomas Graf
> Sent: Monday, December 15, 2014 2:08 PM
> To: Varlese, Marco
> Cc: John Fastabend; Jiri Pirko; netdev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx;
> stephen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; Fastabend, John R;
> roopa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; sfeldma@xxxxxxxxx; linux-
> kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH net-next 1/1] net: Support for switch port
> configuration
> 
> On 12/11/14 at 09:59am, Varlese, Marco wrote:
> > An example of attributes are:
> > * enabling/disabling of learning of source addresses on a given port
> > (you can imagine the attribute called LEARNING for example);
> > * internal loopback control (i.e. LOOPBACK) which will control how the
> > flow of traffic behaves from the switch fabric towards an egress port;
> > * flooding for broadcast/multicast/unicast type of packets (i.e.
> > BFLOODING, MFLOODING, UFLOODING);
> 
> All of these are highly generic and should *not* be passed through from user
> space to the driver directly but rather be properly abstracted as Roopa
> proposed. The value of this API is abstraction.
How would you let the user enable/disable features then? For instance, how would the user enable/disable flooding for broadcast packets (BFLOODING) on a given port? What I was proposing is to have a list of attributes (to be added in if_link.h) which can be tuned by the user using a tool like iproute2. What do you propose? 
I think I have seen Roopa posting his updated ndo patch and getting some feedback by few people already and as long as I will be able to accomplish the use case described here I am happy with his way.

> If we introduce per device attributes for generic functions we lose large
> portions of the value gained.
> You mentioned you have additional attributes in mind, maybe you can give a
> few examples which are not generic, i.e. do not apply to multiple vendors.
I do not have an example right now of a vendor specific attribute but I was just saying that might happen (i.e. someone will have a feature not implemented by others?).
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