1 Ethernet switch device driver model (switchdev)
2 ===============================================
3 Copyright (c) 2014 Jiri Pirko <jiri@resnulli.us>
4 Copyright (c) 2014-2015 Scott Feldman <sfeldma@gmail.com>
7 The Ethernet switch device driver model (switchdev) is an in-kernel driver
8 model for switch devices which offload the forwarding (data) plane from the
11 Figure 1 is a block diagram showing the components of the switchdev model for
12 an example setup using a data-center-class switch ASIC chip. Other setups
13 with SR-IOV or soft switches, such as OVS, are possible.
19 +-------------------------------------------------------------------+
22 +--------------+-------------------------------+
26 +----------------------------------------------+
29 sw1p1 + sw1p3 + sw1p5 + eth1
32 +--+----+----+----+-+--+----+---+ +-----+-----+
33 | Switch driver | | mgmt |
34 | (this document) | | driver |
36 +--------------+----------------+ +-----------+
38 kernel | HW bus (eg PCI)
39 +-------------------------------------------------------------------+
41 +--------------+---+------------+
42 | Switch device (sw1) |
44 | | v offloaded data path | mgmt port
46 +--|----|----+----+----+----+---+
60 #include <linux/netdevice.h>
61 #include <net/switchdev.h>
67 Use "depends NET_SWITCHDEV" in driver's Kconfig to ensure switchdev model
68 support is built for driver.
74 On switchdev driver initialization, the driver will allocate and register a
75 struct net_device (using register_netdev()) for each enumerated physical switch
76 port, called the port netdev. A port netdev is the software representation of
77 the physical port and provides a conduit for control traffic to/from the
78 controller (the kernel) and the network, as well as an anchor point for higher
79 level constructs such as bridges, bonds, VLANs, tunnels, and L3 routers. Using
80 standard netdev tools (iproute2, ethtool, etc), the port netdev can also
81 provide to the user access to the physical properties of the switch port such
82 as PHY link state and I/O statistics.
84 There is (currently) no higher-level kernel object for the switch beyond the
85 port netdevs. All of the switchdev driver ops are netdev ops or switchdev ops.
87 A switch management port is outside the scope of the switchdev driver model.
88 Typically, the management port is not participating in offloaded data plane and
89 is loaded with a different driver, such as a NIC driver, on the management port
95 Udev rules should be used for port netdev naming, using some unique attribute
96 of the port as a key, for example the port MAC address or the port PHYS name.
97 Hard-coding of kernel netdev names within the driver is discouraged; let the
98 kernel pick the default netdev name, and let udev set the final name based on a
101 Using port PHYS name (ndo_get_phys_port_name) for the key is particularly
102 useful for dynamically-named ports where the device names its ports based on
103 external configuration. For example, if a physical 40G port is split logically
104 into 4 10G ports, resulting in 4 port netdevs, the device can give a unique
105 name for each port using port PHYS name. The udev rule would be:
107 SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVER="<driver>", ATTR{phys_port_name}!="", \
108 NAME="$attr{phys_port_name}"
110 Suggested naming convention is "swXpYsZ", where X is the switch name or ID, Y
111 is the port name or ID, and Z is the sub-port name or ID. For example, sw1p1s0
112 would be sub-port 0 on port 1 on switch 1.
117 The switchdev driver must implement the switchdev op switchdev_port_attr_get
118 for SWITCHDEV_ATTR_ID_PORT_PARENT_ID for each port netdev, returning the same
119 physical ID for each port of a switch. The ID must be unique between switches
120 on the same system. The ID does not need to be unique between switches on
123 The switch ID is used to locate ports on a switch and to know if aggregated
124 ports belong to the same switch.
131 If the switchdev driver (and device) only supports offloading of the default
132 network namespace (netns), the driver should set this feature flag to prevent
133 the port netdev from being moved out of the default netns. A netns-aware
134 driver/device would not set this flag and be responsible for partitioning
135 hardware to preserve netns containment. This means hardware cannot forward
136 traffic from a port in one namespace to another port in another namespace.
141 The port netdevs representing the physical switch ports can be organized into
142 higher-level switching constructs. The default construct is a standalone
143 router port, used to offload L3 forwarding. Two or more ports can be bonded
144 together to form a LAG. Two or more ports (or LAGs) can be bridged to bridge
145 L2 networks. VLANs can be applied to sub-divide L2 networks. L2-over-L3
146 tunnels can be built on ports. These constructs are built using standard Linux
147 tools such as the bridge driver, the bonding/team drivers, and netlink-based
148 tools such as iproute2.
150 The switchdev driver can know a particular port's position in the topology by
151 monitoring NETDEV_CHANGEUPPER notifications. For example, a port moved into a
152 bond will see it's upper master change. If that bond is moved into a bridge,
153 the bond's upper master will change. And so on. The driver will track such
154 movements to know what position a port is in in the overall topology by
155 registering for netdevice events and acting on NETDEV_CHANGEUPPER.
157 L2 Forwarding Offload
158 ---------------------
160 The idea is to offload the L2 data forwarding (switching) path from the kernel
161 to the switchdev device by mirroring bridge FDB entries down to the device. An
162 FDB entry is the {port, MAC, VLAN} tuple forwarding destination.
164 To offloading L2 bridging, the switchdev driver/device should support:
166 - Static FDB entries installed on a bridge port
167 - Notification of learned/forgotten src mac/vlans from device
168 - STP state changes on the port
169 - VLAN flooding of multicast/broadcast and unknown unicast packets
174 The switchdev driver should implement ndo_fdb_add, ndo_fdb_del and ndo_fdb_dump
175 to support static FDB entries installed to the device. Static bridge FDB
176 entries are installed, for example, using iproute2 bridge cmd:
178 bridge fdb add ADDR dev DEV [vlan VID] [self]
180 The driver should use the helper switchdev_port_fdb_xxx ops for ndo_fdb_xxx
181 ops, and handle add/delete/dump of SWITCHDEV_OBJ_ID_PORT_FDB object using
182 switchdev_port_obj_xxx ops.
184 XXX: what should be done if offloading this rule to hardware fails (for
185 example, due to full capacity in hardware tables) ?
187 Note: by default, the bridge does not filter on VLAN and only bridges untagged
188 traffic. To enable VLAN support, turn on VLAN filtering:
190 echo 1 >/sys/class/net/<bridge>/bridge/vlan_filtering
192 Notification of Learned/Forgotten Source MAC/VLANs
193 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
195 The switch device will learn/forget source MAC address/VLAN on ingress packets
196 and notify the switch driver of the mac/vlan/port tuples. The switch driver,
197 in turn, will notify the bridge driver using the switchdev notifier call:
199 err = call_switchdev_notifiers(val, dev, info);
201 Where val is SWITCHDEV_FDB_ADD when learning and SWITCHDEV_FDB_DEL when
202 forgetting, and info points to a struct switchdev_notifier_fdb_info. On
203 SWITCHDEV_FDB_ADD, the bridge driver will install the FDB entry into the
204 bridge's FDB and mark the entry as NTF_EXT_LEARNED. The iproute2 bridge
205 command will label these entries "offload":
208 52:54:00:12:35:01 dev sw1p1 master br0 permanent
209 00:02:00:00:02:00 dev sw1p1 master br0 offload
210 00:02:00:00:02:00 dev sw1p1 self
211 52:54:00:12:35:02 dev sw1p2 master br0 permanent
212 00:02:00:00:03:00 dev sw1p2 master br0 offload
213 00:02:00:00:03:00 dev sw1p2 self
214 33:33:00:00:00:01 dev eth0 self permanent
215 01:00:5e:00:00:01 dev eth0 self permanent
216 33:33:ff:00:00:00 dev eth0 self permanent
217 01:80:c2:00:00:0e dev eth0 self permanent
218 33:33:00:00:00:01 dev br0 self permanent
219 01:00:5e:00:00:01 dev br0 self permanent
220 33:33:ff:12:35:01 dev br0 self permanent
222 Learning on the port should be disabled on the bridge using the bridge command:
224 bridge link set dev DEV learning off
226 Learning on the device port should be enabled, as well as learning_sync:
228 bridge link set dev DEV learning on self
229 bridge link set dev DEV learning_sync on self
231 Learning_sync attribute enables syncing of the learned/forgotton FDB entry to
232 the bridge's FDB. It's possible, but not optimal, to enable learning on the
233 device port and on the bridge port, and disable learning_sync.
235 To support learning and learning_sync port attributes, the driver implements
236 switchdev op switchdev_port_attr_get/set for
237 SWITCHDEV_ATTR_PORT_ID_BRIDGE_FLAGS. The driver should initialize the attributes
238 to the hardware defaults.
243 The bridge will skip ageing FDB entries marked with NTF_EXT_LEARNED and it is
244 the responsibility of the port driver/device to age out these entries. If the
245 port device supports ageing, when the FDB entry expires, it will notify the
246 driver which in turn will notify the bridge with SWITCHDEV_FDB_DEL. If the
247 device does not support ageing, the driver can simulate ageing using a
248 garbage collection timer to monitor FBD entries. Expired entries will be
249 notified to the bridge using SWITCHDEV_FDB_DEL. See rocker driver for
250 example of driver running ageing timer.
252 To keep an NTF_EXT_LEARNED entry "alive", the driver should refresh the FDB
253 entry by calling call_switchdev_notifiers(SWITCHDEV_FDB_ADD, ...). The
254 notification will reset the FDB entry's last-used time to now. The driver
255 should rate limit refresh notifications, for example, no more than once a
256 second. (The last-used time is visible using the bridge -s fdb option).
258 STP State Change on Port
259 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
261 Internally or with a third-party STP protocol implementation (e.g. mstpd), the
262 bridge driver maintains the STP state for ports, and will notify the switch
263 driver of STP state change on a port using the switchdev op
264 switchdev_attr_port_set for SWITCHDEV_ATTR_PORT_ID_STP_UPDATE.
266 State is one of BR_STATE_*. The switch driver can use STP state updates to
267 update ingress packet filter list for the port. For example, if port is
268 DISABLED, no packets should pass, but if port moves to BLOCKED, then STP BPDUs
269 and other IEEE 01:80:c2:xx:xx:xx link-local multicast packets can pass.
271 Note that STP BDPUs are untagged and STP state applies to all VLANs on the port
272 so packet filters should be applied consistently across untagged and tagged
278 For a given L2 VLAN domain, the switch device should flood multicast/broadcast
279 and unknown unicast packets to all ports in domain, if allowed by port's
280 current STP state. The switch driver, knowing which ports are within which
281 vlan L2 domain, can program the switch device for flooding. The packet may
282 be sent to the port netdev for processing by the bridge driver. The
283 bridge should not reflood the packet to the same ports the device flooded,
284 otherwise there will be duplicate packets on the wire.
286 To avoid duplicate packets, the device/driver should mark a packet as already
287 forwarded using skb->offload_fwd_mark. The same mark is set on the device
288 ports in the domain using dev->offload_fwd_mark. If the skb->offload_fwd_mark
289 is non-zero and matches the forwarding egress port's dev->skb_mark, the kernel
290 will drop the skb right before transmit on the egress port, with the
291 understanding that the device already forwarded the packet on same egress port.
292 The driver can use switchdev_port_fwd_mark_set() to set a globally unique mark
293 for port's dev->offload_fwd_mark, based on the port's parent ID (switch ID) and
296 It is possible for the switch device to not handle flooding and push the
297 packets up to the bridge driver for flooding. This is not ideal as the number
298 of ports scale in the L2 domain as the device is much more efficient at
299 flooding packets that software.
301 If supported by the device, flood control can be offloaded to it, preventing
302 certain netdevs from flooding unicast traffic for which there is no FDB entry.
307 XXX: complete this section
313 Offloading L3 routing requires that device be programmed with FIB entries from
314 the kernel, with the device doing the FIB lookup and forwarding. The device
315 does a longest prefix match (LPM) on FIB entries matching route prefix and
316 forwards the packet to the matching FIB entry's nexthop(s) egress ports.
318 To program the device, the driver implements support for
319 SWITCHDEV_OBJ_IPV[4|6]_FIB object using switchdev_port_obj_xxx ops.
320 switchdev_port_obj_add is used for both adding a new FIB entry to the device,
321 or modifying an existing entry on the device.
323 XXX: Currently, only SWITCHDEV_OBJ_ID_IPV4_FIB objects are supported.
325 SWITCHDEV_OBJ_ID_IPV4_FIB object passes:
327 struct switchdev_obj_ipv4_fib { /* IPV4_FIB */
337 to add/modify/delete IPv4 dst/dest_len prefix on table tb_id. The *fi
338 structure holds details on the route and route's nexthops. *dev is one of the
339 port netdevs mentioned in the routes next hop list. If the output port netdevs
340 referenced in the route's nexthop list don't all have the same switch ID, the
341 driver is not called to add/modify/delete the FIB entry.
343 Routes offloaded to the device are labeled with "offload" in the ip route
347 default via 192.168.0.2 dev eth0
348 11.0.0.0/30 dev sw1p1 proto kernel scope link src 11.0.0.2 offload
349 11.0.0.4/30 via 11.0.0.1 dev sw1p1 proto zebra metric 20 offload
350 11.0.0.8/30 dev sw1p2 proto kernel scope link src 11.0.0.10 offload
351 11.0.0.12/30 via 11.0.0.9 dev sw1p2 proto zebra metric 20 offload
352 12.0.0.2 proto zebra metric 30 offload
353 nexthop via 11.0.0.1 dev sw1p1 weight 1
354 nexthop via 11.0.0.9 dev sw1p2 weight 1
355 12.0.0.3 via 11.0.0.1 dev sw1p1 proto zebra metric 20 offload
356 12.0.0.4 via 11.0.0.9 dev sw1p2 proto zebra metric 20 offload
357 192.168.0.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.0.15
359 XXX: add/mod/del IPv6 FIB API
364 The FIB entry's nexthop list contains the nexthop tuple (gateway, dev), but for
365 the switch device to forward the packet with the correct dst mac address, the
366 nexthop gateways must be resolved to the neighbor's mac address. Neighbor mac
367 address discovery comes via the ARP (or ND) process and is available via the
368 arp_tbl neighbor table. To resolve the routes nexthop gateways, the driver
369 should trigger the kernel's neighbor resolution process. See the rocker
370 driver's rocker_port_ipv4_resolve() for an example.
372 The driver can monitor for updates to arp_tbl using the netevent notifier
373 NETEVENT_NEIGH_UPDATE. The device can be programmed with resolved nexthops
374 for the routes as arp_tbl updates. The driver implements ndo_neigh_destroy
375 to know when arp_tbl neighbor entries are purged from the port.
377 Transaction item queue
378 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
380 For switchdev ops attr_set and obj_add, there is a 2 phase transaction model
381 used. First phase is to "prepare" anything needed, including various checks,
382 memory allocation, etc. The goal is to handle the stuff that is not unlikely
383 to fail here. The second phase is to "commit" the actual changes.
385 Switchdev provides an inftrastructure for sharing items (for example memory
386 allocations) between the two phases.
388 The object created by a driver in "prepare" phase and it is queued up by:
389 switchdev_trans_item_enqueue()
390 During the "commit" phase, the driver gets the object by:
391 switchdev_trans_item_dequeue()
393 If a transaction is aborted during "prepare" phase, switchdev code will handle
394 cleanup of the queued-up objects.