From: EXT Bill Fischofer [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2016 8:17 PM
To: Savolainen, Petri (Nokia - FI/Espoo)
Cc: LNG ODP Mailman List
Subject: Re: [lng-odp] [API-NEXT PATCH] api: packet: added multicast flags

Before sending my reviewed-by I started working on implementing these (along 
with the tests).  The flags themselves are straightforward, however the parse 
definitions are somewhat complicated and we may want to simplify things a bit 
to capture what applications are really looking for.

First, we only define a single bit for each of these and it's not clear whether 
this applies to the source or destination address of the packet.  For the sets, 
I'm assuming we'd want these to refer to the destination addresses since it 
makes little sense for an application to modify a source address since the 
packet has already been received, however on receipt do applications want to 
know whether the packet originated from a broadcast or multicast address?  What 
are the use cases we're looking to support, since that will say whether we need 
one or two bits for these designators.

All these bits are for destination address. It would be a protocol error (L2/L3 
error flag set) in all these cases if source address would be bcast or mcast.


Ethernet multicast is indicated by bit 7 of the MAC address being 1.  By 
convention, most use MAC addr FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF to indicate broadcast even 
though Ethernet really doesn't distinguish between these two.

Eth_bcast is the broadcast address - in practice all ones. I’d expect that at 
least some IEEE Ethernet standard would define that as the bcast address.


So do we really need both eth_bcast and eth_mcast?

Yes. Multicast Ethernet addresses are many and handled differently (e.g. in IP 
stack) than the (single) bcast address (all ones).

For IP things are a bit more complicated.

Parser needs to find only those addresses that are fixed by the protocol 
address format. Dynamically configured addresses (like subnet bcast) would need 
a  proper IP stack,  ODP is just a (dummy) parser – not a stack.

For IPv4, multicast is basically a Class D IP address (addresses in the range 
224.x.x.x through 239.x.x.x (leading hex nibble D). Broadcast addresses, 
however, are a function of the subnet being used and that's not unambiguous in 
the absence of a separately specified subnet mask.  For example, for network 
192.168.1.0/8<http://192.168.1.0/8> the broadcast address is 192.168.1.255, 
however for network 192.168.1.0/4<http://192.168.1.0/4> the broadcast address 
is 192.168.1.15 whereas this is a unicast address in the /8 network.  What 
exactly do we expect the ip_bcast bit to mean with respect to the (unknown) 
subnet mask?

IPv4 multicast addresses are defined by the leading address bits of 1110 
(ip_mcast == 1). Broadcast is 255.255.255.255 (ip_bcast == 1).

For IPv6 we have a similar issue in that IPv6 doesn't recognize broadcast 
addresses, but instead uses multicast addresses, which have prefix ff00::/8  
with address ff02::1 being the "all nodes" multicast address, which is sort of 
like broadcast.  Exactly how do we wish to define ip_bcast and ip_mcast for 
IPv6?

IPv4 multicast addresses are defined by the leading address bits of 11111111 
(ip_mcast == 1). There’s no bcast address (ip_bcast == 0 always).


-Petri


On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 3:12 AM, Savolainen, Petri (Nokia - FI/Espoo) 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:


From: EXT Bill Fischofer 
[mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>]
Sent: Friday, January 22, 2016 1:03 AM

To: Savolainen, Petri (Nokia - FI/Espoo)
Cc: LNG ODP Mailman List
Subject: Re: [lng-odp] [API-NEXT PATCH] api: packet: added multicast flags



On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 9:30 AM, Savolainen, Petri (Nokia - FI/Espoo) 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:


From: EXT Bill Fischofer 
[mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>]
Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2016 4:43 PM
To: Savolainen, Petri (Nokia - FI/Espoo)
Cc: LNG ODP Mailman List
Subject: Re: [lng-odp] [API-NEXT PATCH] api: packet: added multicast flags



On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 3:39 AM, Petri Savolainen 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Added packet flags for Ethernet and IP broad- and multicast.
For application, it's more effective to check a flag than all
destionation address bits.

Signed-off-by: Petri Savolainen 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
---
 include/odp/api/packet_flags.h | 70 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
 1 file changed, 69 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/include/odp/api/packet_flags.h b/include/odp/api/packet_flags.h
index 8de0c82..65fd3ce 100644
--- a/include/odp/api/packet_flags.h
+++ b/include/odp/api/packet_flags.h
@@ -102,11 +102,29 @@ int odp_packet_has_l4(odp_packet_t pkt);
  *
  * @param pkt Packet handle
  * @retval non-zero if packet contains a valid eth header
- * @retval 0 if packet does not contain a valid & known eth header
+ * @retval 0 if packet does not contain a valid eth header
  */
 int odp_packet_has_eth(odp_packet_t pkt);

 /**
+ * Check for Ethernet broadcast address
+ *
+ * @param pkt Packet handle
+ * @retval non-zero if Ethernet destination address is the broadcast address
+ * @retval 0 if Ethernet destination address is not the broadcast address
+ */
+int odp_packet_has_eth_bcast(odp_packet_t pkt);
+
+/**
+ * Check for Ethernet multicast address
+ *
+ * @param pkt Packet handle
+ * @retval non-zero if Ethernet destination address is a multicast address
+ * @retval 0 if Ethernet destination address is not a multicast address
+ */
+int odp_packet_has_eth_mcast(odp_packet_t pkt);
+
+/**
  * Check for jumbo frame
  *
  * @param pkt Packet handle
@@ -161,6 +179,24 @@ int odp_packet_has_ipv4(odp_packet_t pkt);
 int odp_packet_has_ipv6(odp_packet_t pkt);

 /**
+ * Check for IP broadcast address
+ *
+ * @param pkt Packet handle
+ * @retval non-zero if IP destination address is a broadcast address
+ * @retval 0 if IP destination address is not a broadcast address
+ */
+int odp_packet_has_ip_bcast(odp_packet_t pkt);
+
+/**
+ * Check for IP multicast address
+ *
+ * @param pkt Packet handle
+ * @retval non-zero if IP destination address is a multicast address
+ * @retval 0 if IP destination address is not a multicast address
+ */
+int odp_packet_has_ip_mcast(odp_packet_t pkt);
+

Should there be an odp_packet_has_ip_anycast() API for completeness?


I don’t remember seeing that commonly supported by HW parsers whereas the two 
above are. It can be always added later if commonly needed and supported.


Anycast is a mandatory part of IPv6 so I don't see why we'd want to omit it.  
Given the complexities of these parses, I'd imagine SW parsers would treat 
these as a separately-handled lazy parse case (i.e., no parse is done until one 
of these is actually called since the expectation would be that they'd be 
called rarely).


There are many protocols with many mandatory features, but ODP is not a 
protocol stack. ODP should include only those protocol field checks that are 
commonly available in HW (and commonly needed by applications using ODP). We 
should avoid adding features for completeness. If most HW parsers output mcast 
and bcast flags, but none of them output an anycast flag - ODP should include 
mcast and bcast but not anycast.

Could HW even distinguish anycast addresses from unicast/multicast addresses? 
HW depends on fixed address formats (like N most significant bits being 1), it 
would not (necessarily) know about host or router protocol stack settings.







+/**
  * Check for IP fragment
  *
  * @param pkt Packet handle
@@ -265,6 +301,22 @@ void odp_packet_has_l4_set(odp_packet_t pkt, int val);
 void odp_packet_has_eth_set(odp_packet_t pkt, int val);

 /**
+ * Set flag for Ethernet broadcast address
+ *
+ * @param pkt Packet handle
+ * @param val Value
+ */
+void odp_packet_has_eth_bcast_set(odp_packet_t pkt, int val);
+
+/**
+ * Set flag for Ethernet multicast address
+ *
+ * @param pkt Packet handle
+ * @param val Value
+ */
+void odp_packet_has_eth_mcast_set(odp_packet_t pkt, int val);
+
+/**
  * Set flag for jumbo frame
  *
  * @param pkt Packet handle
@@ -313,6 +365,22 @@ void odp_packet_has_ipv4_set(odp_packet_t pkt, int val);
 void odp_packet_has_ipv6_set(odp_packet_t pkt, int val);

 /**
+ * Set flag for IP broadcast address
+ *
+ * @param pkt Packet handle
+ * @param val Value
+ */
+void odp_packet_has_ip_bcast_set(odp_packet_t pkt, int val);
+
+/**
+ * Set flag for IP multicast address
+ *
+ * @param pkt Packet handle
+ * @param val Value
+ */
+void odp_packet_has_ip_mcast_set(odp_packet_t pkt, int val);
+

The query APIs for these attributes are fine, however given that these are 
encoded in the Ethernet/IP addresses I'm not sure that set variants make sense 
here.  Wouldn't these be indirectly changing the Ethernet/IP address?  
Especially in the case of IPv6 these tend to follow complex rules that aren't 
simple booleans.

As any other flags, if user changes the packet (e.g. re-uses it for an unicast 
packet) or allocates a new one,  he can reset / set relevant flags. The next 
module the pipeline (HW or SW) needs to see updated flags.

-Petri


As we add more of these attributes I continue to believe allowing the packet to 
be modified and the parse flags to be set independently is both wasteful (user 
needs to make multiple calls) and error-prone.  The more such "set" calls there 
are the more likely it is that applications will forget to make one or do so in 
an inconsistent manner, at which point they lose their usefulness (and 
trustworthiness).

It would be better to have an explicit odp_packet_parse() or 
odp_packet_parse_reset() API that would either force a reparse of the modified 
packet (resulting in a guaranteed known good parse) or simply reset the parse 
by indicating that the previous parse is now stale and resulting in a new lazy 
parse as needed should these attributes be subsequently referenced.


Application needs to set/update only those flags that are needed in the next 
steps of the pipeline (next application or ODP blocks). When application 
modifies a packet it must keep track what it has changed. It would be a sign of 
bad application design if it would lose track on changes and run packet through 
a parser (again) to see what kind of packet it currently has. Also most HW 
accelerators parse packets once during packet input and you cannot use HW 
parser without circulating the packet back to the input (e.g. loopback 
interface).

I have also thought to add a bit field struct of all packet flags that could be 
used (to read / write) multiple flags with a single call (instead of many 
individual calls). Also a “zero all flags” call could be added. Individual 
calls are still useful and provides best performance when user needs to check 
or set only couple of flags (commonly a SW layer is interested on a sub-set of 
flags). But these would be a topic for another patch.

-Petri






+/**
  * Set flag for IP fragment
  *
  * @param pkt Packet handle
--
2.6.3

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