Re: [PATCH v2 net-next 08/14] ipv6: Add hop-by-hop header to jumbograms in ip6_output
From: Alexander H Duyck <hidden>
Date: 2022-03-04 19:00:56
On Fri, 2022-03-04 at 09:09 -0800, Eric Dumazet wrote:
On Fri, Mar 4, 2022 at 7:48 AM Alexander H Duyck [off-list ref] wrote:quoted
On Thu, 2022-03-03 at 21:33 -0700, David Ahern wrote:quoted
On 3/3/22 11:16 AM, Eric Dumazet wrote:quoted
From: Coco Li <redacted> Instead of simply forcing a 0 payload_len in IPv6 header, implement RFC 2675 and insert a custom extension header. Note that only TCP stack is currently potentially generating jumbograms, and that this extension header is purely local, it wont be sent on a physical link. This is needed so that packet capture (tcpdump and friends) can properly dissect these large packets.I am fairly certain I know how you are going to respond, but I will ask this anyways :-) : The networking stack as it stands today does not care that skb->len > 64kB and nothing stops a driver from setting max gso size to be > 64kB. Sure, packet socket apps (tcpdump) get confused but if the h/w supports the larger packet size it just works. The jumbogram header is getting adding at the L3/IPv6 layer and then removed by the drivers before pushing to hardware. So, the only benefit of the push and pop of the jumbogram header is for packet sockets and tc/ebpf programs - assuming those programs understand the header (tcpdump (libpcap?) yes, random packet socket program maybe not). Yes, it is a standard header so apps have a chance to understand the larger packet size, but what is the likelihood that random apps or even ebpf programs will understand it? Alternative solutions to the packet socket (ebpf programs have access to skb->len) problem would allow IPv4 to join the Big TCP party. I am wondering how feasible an alternative solution is to get large packet sizes across the board with less overhead and changes.I agree that the header insertion and removal seems like a lot of extra overhead for the sake of correctness. In the Microsoft case I am pretty sure their LSOv2 supported both v4 and v6. I think we could do something similar, we would just need to make certain the device supports it and as such maybe it would make sense to implement it as a gso type flag? Could we handle the length field like we handle the checksum and place a value in there that we know is wrong, but could be used to provide additional data? Perhaps we could even use it to store the MSS in the form of the length of the first packet so if examined, the packet would look like the first frame of the flow with a set of trailing data.I am a bit sad you did not give all this feedback back in August when I presented BIG TCP.
As I recall, I was thinking along the same lines as what you have done here, but Dave's question about including IPv4 does bring up an interesting point. And the Microsoft version supported both.
We did a lot of work in the last 6 months to implement, test all this, making sure this worked. I am not sure I want to spend another 6 months implementing what you suggest.
I am not saying we have to do this. I am simply stating a "what if" just to gauge this approach. You could think of it as thinking out loud, but in written form.
For instance, input path will not like packets larger than 64KB. There is this thing trimming padding bytes, you probably do not want to mess with this.
I had overlooked the fact that this is being used on the input path, the trimming would be an issue. I suppose the fact that the LSOv2 didn't have an Rx counterpart would be one reason for us to not consider the IPv4 approach.