Re: [PATCH net-next v2 5/5] net: bcmgenet: Interrogate PHY for WAKE_FILTER programming

[Jacob Keller]

On 10/27/2023 10:15 AM, Florian Fainelli wrote:
> On 10/27/23 09:55, Jacob Keller wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 10/26/2023 4:52 PM, Florian Fainelli wrote:
>>> On 10/26/23 16:23, Jacob Keller wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 10/26/2023 3:45 PM, Florian Fainelli wrote:
>>>>> Determine whether the PHY can support waking up from the user programmed
>>>>> network filter, and if it can utilize it.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Here, you're passing through to phy_ethtool_set_rxnfc, basically
>>>> allowing the lower device to program the wakeup filter if its supported. Ok.
>>>>
>>>> This almost feels like it would belong generally in the higher level
>>>> ethtool code rather than in the driver?
>>>
>>> Agreed, as Doug just pointed out to me, there is still an open question
>>> about reconciling the PHY and the MAC RXNFC spaces into a single
>>> ethtool_rxnfc structure.
>>>
>>> An ideal goal is to have zero modifications to neither the MAC or the
>>> PHY drivers such that they can both work in their own spaces as if they
>>> were alone, or combined.
>>>
>>> I suppose that if we get the number of supported rules from the MAC
>>> first, and then get the supported number of rules from the PHY next, we
>>> could do something like this:
>>>
>>> rule index
>>> | 0|
>>> | .| -> MAC rules
>>> |15|
>>> |16| -> PHY rule
>>>
>>> and each of the MAC or the PHY {get,set}_rxnfc() operate within a base
>>> rule number which is relative to their own space. So the MAC driver
>>> would continue to care about its (max..first) - base (0) range, and the
>>> PHY would care about (max..first) - base (16).
>>>
>>> Though then the issue is discoverability, how do you know which rule
>>> location is backed by which hardware block. We could create an
>>> intermediate and inert rule at index 16 for instance that acts as a
>>> delimiter?
>>>
>>> Or we could create yet another RX_CLS_LOC_* value that is "special" and
>>> can denote whether of the MAC or the PHY we should be targeting
>>> whichever is supported, but that does not usually lend itself to being
>>> logically ORed with the existing RX_CLS_LOC_* values. WDYT?
>>>
>>> pw-bot: cr
>>
>> Ah, yea there is a lot of complexity to consider here.
> 
> Yes this is only the tip of iceberg! Here is hopefully a better 
> description of our particular system where this is being requested (the 
> fact there is a single one also makes me question the entire effort, but 
> anyway). We have 2 distinct system sleep modes:
> 
> - akin to ACPI S2 where the Ethernet PHY and MAC remain enabled and both 
> can be used for Wake-on-LAN filtering, with the MAC being more capable 
> than the PHY. System power consumption is just around 500mW at the wall. 
> In that case it would make sense to leverage the MAC's capability 
> because it is better and would lead to fewer false wake-ups
> 
> - akin to ACPI S3 where the Ethernet PHY only remains enabled, the MAC 
> is powered off (as is most of the SoC), but we have limited Wake-on-LAN 
> capability in the form of network filter as we can only match on a 
> custom MAC DA + mask. System power consumption is closer to 350mW at the 
> wall.
> 
> My users are not really willing to use the broad WAKE_MCAST because they 
> want to match specifically on mDNS over IPv4 (or IPv6), so they prefer 
> to program an exact match to limit the amount of false wake-ups. 
> Arguably there will already be quite a lot in home network due to 
> phones, IoT devices, and whatnot.
> 
>  From an user perspective they would know which system standby state is 
> being entered so one could imagine that ahead of entry, we could 
> configure either the MAC, or the PHY when targeting S2, or just the PHY 
> when targeting S3. This implies that we can selectively target one 
> entity, or the other.
> 
> For the current time being, and knowing the use case of my users, 
> directing all of the Wake-on-LAN configuration towards the PHY would be 
> enough IMHO, even if that means we stop leveraging the MAC capabilities, 
> hence this patch series.
> 

Right.

>>
>> I'm not entirely sure what we should do here. What about extending with
>> another attribute entirely instead of another bit in RX_CLS_LOC?
> 
> Yes possibly, or we just target different objects, right now we have 
> visibility into the MACs via the net_device, it seems like we ought to 
> be able to target some ethtool APIs towards PHY objects, which currently 
> have no netlink representation. There is on-going work to bridge that gap:
> 
> https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/ffc6ff4a-d1af-4643-a538-fd13e6be9e06@xxxxxxx/T/
> 
> but I am not sure we will reach an agreement any time soon. Maybe I can 
> convince my masters to wait for that to land and use WAKE_MCAST in the 
> meantime.
> 

Sure, but this obviously costs a potentially significant amount of extra
power, and it would be better to avoid that.

> I would not necessary want to invent a new set of ethtool commands and 
> kernel APIs such that we could do the below examples, though maybe this 
> is not incompatible with the work being done by Maxime:
> 
> # Target the Ethernet MAC
> ethtool -N eth0 flow-type ether dst 01:00:5e:00:00:fb loc 0 action -2 # 
> Assumes MAC by default
> ethtool -N eth0 flow-type ether dst 01:00:5e:00:00:fb loc 0 action -2 
> target mac
> 
> # Target the Ethernet PHY, if capable
> ethtool -N eth0 flow-type ether dst 01:00:5e:00:00:fb loc 0 action -2 
> target phy
> 
> # Enable WAKE_FILTER at the MAC level
> ethtool -s eth0 wol f # assumes MAC by default
> ethtool -s eth0 wol f target mac
> 
> # Enable WAKE_FILTER at the PHY level, if capable
> ethtool -s eth0 wol f target phy
> 
> though maybe this is the much needed addition to ethtool so we can be 
> more selective.
> 
> After a bunch of candies on Tuesday I might reach a state of trance and 
> figure which way to proceed :D

It does seem like an acceptable compromise here, and perhaps being
driver specific is ok, since this does depend a lot on the individual
device support, thus broadly applying this across all drivers could be
problematic.

I like the idea of being able to more precisely target the rules so that
its clear to userspace what is being done... but I also understand the
challenge of wanting to deliver what feels like a small win and being
asked to do something much larger.