[dpdk-users] PTP Hardware timestamping

[Karthik Sundaravel]

NICs: Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller X710 for 10GbE SFP+ (rev 01)
Kernel: 3.10.0-1062.18.1.el7.x86_64
DPDK Version: dpdk-20.11-rc5

My setup looks like below.



 1st Machine                                    2nd Machine

+-------------------------+      +------+     +-------------------------+
|  +---------+   +-------+|      |      |     +-------+                 |
|  | tcpdump |---| NIC A |-------|      ------|NIC A  |---------+       |
|  +---------+   +-------+|      |      |     +-------+         |       |
|                         |      |      |     |            +----|----+  |
|                         |      |Switch|     |            | Testpmd |  |
|                   -     |      |      |     |            +---------+  |
|  +---------+   +-------+|      |      |     +-------+         |       |
|  |  ptp4l  |---| NIC B |-------|      ------| NIC B |---------+       |
|  +---------+   +-------+|      |      |     +-------+                 |
+-------------------------+      +------+     +-------------------------+




I use ptp4l to generate the PTP sync messages using the command
ptp4l -i eno4 -2 -m -H

The Testpmd is compiled using
meson -Dc_args="-DRTE_LIBRTE_IEEE1588" build

and run with commands
./app/dpdk-testpmd -l 1,2,3 -- -i --nb-cores=2 --coremask=0xc
--forward-mode=ieee1588
testpmd> start

In testpmd I have modified the app/test-pmd/ieee1588fwd.c, such that the
PTP SYNC messages are forwarded to the NIC A of the first machine by
hardcoding the destination mac address.

In NIC A of the first machine. I dump the packets received from testpmd,
where I do not find the timestamps added. The tcpdump logs output

13:57:59.793588 e4:43:4b:5e:27:83 (oui Unknown) > e4:43:4b:5e:1c:22 (oui
Unknown), ethertype Unknown (0x88f7), length 60:
0x0000:  0002 002c 0000 0200 0000 0000 0000 0000  ...,............
0x0010:  0000 0000 e443 4bff fe5e 1c23 0001 2a14  .....CK..^.#..*.
0x0020:  0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000       ..............
13:57:59.793609 e4:43:4b:5e:27:82 (oui Unknown) > e4:43:4b:5e:1c:22 (oui
Unknown), ethertype Unknown (0x88f7), length 60:
0x0000:  0002 002c 0000 0200 0000 0000 0000 0000  ...,............
0x0010:  0000 0000 e443 4bff fe5e 1c23 0001 2a14  .....CK..^.#..*.
0x0020:  0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000       ...

I would like to understand why I am not seeing the PTP sync packets
timestamped by hardware. Is there anything I need to change in my setup to
get the hardware timestamping working ?

Also the PTP sync packet generated by ptp4l is also not timestamped, while
the PTP follow up message is timestamped. However the testpmd handles only
PTP sync packets