[dpdk-dev] [PATCH v2 00/25] Generic flow API (rte_flow)

John Fastabend john.fastabend at gmail.com
Wed Jan 4 20:34:03 CET 2017


[...]

>>> Well, it should be easier to answer if you have a specific use-case in mind
>>> you would like to support but that cannot be expressed with the API as
>>> defined in [1], in which case please share it with the community.
>>
>> A use-case would be implementing OvS DPIF flow offload using this API.
> 
> OK, OVS has been mentioned several times in this thread and my understanding
> is that rte_flow seems to accommodate most of its needs according to people
> familiar with it. Perhaps ML archives can answer the remaining questions you
> may have about combining rte_flow with OVS.

For what its worth. I reviewed this and believe it should be sufficient
to support the OVS SR-IOV offload use case with action/classifier extensions
but without any fundamental changes to the design. We built a prototype
OVS offload on top of another API we dubbed Flow-API a year+ ago and there
seems to be a 1:1 mapping between that older API and the one now in DPDK
so I'm happy. And the missing things seem to fit nicely into extensions.

Also I believe the partial pre-classify use cases should be easily handled
as well although I'm not as familiar with the bit-level details of that
implementation.

At some point capability discovery will be useful but we certainly don't need
those in first iteration and rte_flow doesn't preclude these type of extensions
so that is good.

By the way thanks for doing this work Adrien, glad to see it being accepted
and drivers picking it up.

Thanks,
John

> 
>>> [1] http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2016-December/052954.html
>>> [2] http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2016-December/052975.html
> 
> [3] http://dpdk.org/doc/guides/prog_guide/rte_flow.html
> 



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