Re: [Pv-drivers] [PATCH] vmxnet3: Enable GRO support.

On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 4:23 PM, Scott Goldman [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

As an aside, in many cases the hypervisor actually has all of the
information that is necessary to keep LRO on but does not provide it
to the guest.  For example, in the VM-to-VM case the MSS is provided
by the sender as part of the TSO descriptor and if given to the
receiver we could generate a GSO frame and avoid the need to do GRO in
the first place.  Do you know if it is possible to do this?

I think that sounds like a pretty good idea, but if I understand correctly, that change needs to go in the hypervisor, not just the driver. The device emulation backend needs to populate that MSS somewhere in the receive descriptor. I will file an internal bug about it, but just to set expectations, ESX 5.0 is about to be released, so realistically at the earliest, this change may not be publically available for another year.

I had hoped that maybe the information was already being populated by
the hypervisor but not used by the driver.  However, from what I have
gathered that's not the case.

P.S. Ronghua, the vmxnet3 mastermind, works at Nicira now. If you see him, tell him I said hi.

Sure, I'll say hi next time I see him.