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Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] Network Checksum Removal




On 21 May 2005, at 15:53, Keir Fraser wrote:

Traffic generated externally, if rx hardware checksum is available and
enabled, then dom0 will notify domU that it is unnecessary to validate
this checksum (providing the checksum is valid) by enabling the csum
bit.  If domU is not notified that it is unnecessary to vaildate the
checksum, then domU will do it.

Unfortunately you can't trust the ip_summed flag because, as you point out yourself, the bridge and IP forwarding paths both clobber it to CHECKSUM_NONE. This puts us in a pickle: without hacking in some more info we have no way to know whether the physical interface (eth0, say) summed the packet or not. And, if it did, whether it was a CHECKSUM_UNNECESSARY or a CHECKSUM_HW kind of summing (they differ in how you interpret the result).

Your patch as its stands is only correct if eth0 sets ip_summed==CHECKSUM_UNNECESSARY on received packets.

I've checked in a modified version of your patch that hopefully deals with propagating checksum information in both directions across a virtual bridge or router. I replaced your skb flags with two new ones -- proto_csum_blank and proto_csum_valid.

The former indicates that the protocol-level checksum needs filling in. This is not a problem for local processing, but the flag is picked up before sending to a physical interface and fixed up.

The latter indicates that the proto-level checksum has been validated since arrival at localhost (*or* that the packet originated from a domU on localhost). This flag survives crossing a bridge/router so we can trust it when deciding if checksum validation is required.

I'll push the patch to the bkbits repository just as soon as bkbits rematerialises. :-)

If you have any performance or stress tests that you were using to test checksum offloading, it would be great to find out how they perform on the checked-in version!

 Thanks,
 Keir


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