[dpdk-dev] [RFC] lib: introduce traffic mirroring API

[Fu, Patrick]

Hi Thomas,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thomas Monjalon <thomas at monjalon.net>
> Sent: Friday, July 31, 2020 5:32 PM
> To: Fu, Patrick <patrick.fu at intel.com>
> Cc: dev at dpdk.org; Yigit, Ferruh <ferruh.yigit at intel.com>;
> maxime.coquelin at redhat.com; Richardson, Bruce
> <bruce.richardson at intel.com>; Wang, Zhihong <zhihong.wang at intel.com>;
> Wang, Liang-min <liang-min.wang at intel.com>; Ananyev, Konstantin
> <konstantin.ananyev at intel.com>; Miskell, Timothy
> <timothy.miskell at intel.com>; Liang, Cunming <cunming.liang at intel.com>;
> arybchenko at solarflare.com; Jiawei Wang <jiaweiw at mellanox.com>;
> orika at mellanox.com
> Subject: Re: [dpdk-dev] [RFC] lib: introduce traffic mirroring API
> 
> 31/07/2020 04:34, Fu, Patrick:
> > Hi Thomas,
> >
> > From: Thomas Monjalon <thomas at monjalon.net>
> > >
> > > I assume you consider deprecating rte_eth_mirror_rule_set()
> > >
> http://doc.dpdk.org/api/rte__ethdev_8h.html#a1c88c5e86f0358981443600
> > > f
> > > 05069091
> > >
> > Not exactly.
> > The rte_eth_mirror_rule_set() is vendor-dependent API which allows
> admin to configure two components (traffic source and traffic destination) of
> the same NIC so packets can be copied from traffic source to traffic
> destination through hardware. The API allows vendor to implement this
> function via hardware-dependent offloading capability. In contrast, this RFC
> is proposing two high-level APIs (vendor independent) to allow admin
> configuring mirror traffic from device A to device B where device A and B may
> come from different vendors. In particular, our initial target is on software
> virtual devices such as virtio/vhost where there is no mirror hw support.
> >
> > > Please consider reviewing this implementation in rte_flow:
> > > 	https://patches.dpdk.org/patch/73279/
> > >
> > For the same reason explained, this patch is also targeting at different use
> cases with our RFC.
> 
> We should not have different API depending on the device.
> Please look how to unify in a single API.
> 
I believe the proposed APIs work on a different abstraction level than existing APIs. 
But we can look  into the possibility if they could be unified.
So in general, do you think it's a right direction that we add common framework
in DPDK to support cross devices traffic and vdev devices traffic mirroring?

Thanks,

Patrick