Re: [RFC PATCH net-next V2 0/6] XDP rx handler

From: Alexei Starovoitov
Date: Tue Aug 14 2018 - 09:27:04 EST


On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 11:17:24AM +0800, Jason Wang wrote:
> Hi:
>
> This series tries to implement XDP support for rx hanlder. This would
> be useful for doing native XDP on stacked device like macvlan, bridge
> or even bond.
>
> The idea is simple, let stacked device register a XDP rx handler. And
> when driver return XDP_PASS, it will call a new helper xdp_do_pass()
> which will try to pass XDP buff to XDP rx handler directly. XDP rx
> handler may then decide how to proceed, it could consume the buff, ask
> driver to drop the packet or ask the driver to fallback to normal skb
> path.
>
> A sample XDP rx handler was implemented for macvlan. And virtio-net
> (mergeable buffer case) was converted to call xdp_do_pass() as an
> example. For ease comparision, generic XDP support for rx handler was
> also implemented.
>
> Compared to skb mode XDP on macvlan, native XDP on macvlan (XDP_DROP)
> shows about 83% improvement.

I'm missing the motiviation for this.
It seems performance of such solution is ~1M packet per second.
What would be a real life use case for such feature ?

Another concern is that XDP users expect to get line rate performance
and native XDP delivers it. 'generic XDP' is a fallback only
mechanism to operate on NICs that don't have native XDP yet.
Toshiaki's veth XDP work fits XDP philosophy and allows
high speed networking to be done inside containers after veth.
It's trying to get to line rate inside container.
This XDP rx handler stuff is destined to stay at 1Mpps speeds forever
and the users will get confused with forever slow modes of XDP.

Please explain the problem you're trying to solve.
"look, here I can to XDP on top of macvlan" is not an explanation of the problem.