[PATCH RFC v1 net-next 00/12] bridge-fastpath and related improvements

[Eric Woudstra]

On 10/15/24 2:16 PM, Felix Fietkau wrote:
> Hi Eric,
> 
> On 14.10.24 20:29, Eric Woudstra wrote:
>> It would be no problem for me to change the subject and body, if you
>> think that is better.
>>
>> The thing is, these patches actually make it possible to set up a fully
>> functional software fastpath between bridged interfaces. Only after the
>> software fastpath is set up and functional, it can be offloaded, which
>> happens to by my personal motivation to write this patch-set.
>>
>> If the offload flag is set in the flowtable, the software fastpath will
>> be offloaded. But in this patch-set, there is nothing that changes
>> anything there, the existing code is used unchanged.
> 
> FWIW, a while back, I also wanted to add a software fast path for the
> bridge layer to the kernel, also with the intention of using it for
> hardware offload. It wasn't accepted back then, because (if I remember
> correctly) people didn't want any extra complexity in the network stack
> to make the bridge layer faster.

Hello Felix,

I think this patch-set is a clear showcase it is not very complex at
all. The core of making it possible only consists a few patches. Half of
this patch-set involves improvements that also apply to the
forward-fastpath.

> Because of that, I created this piece of software:
> https://github.com/nbd168/bridger
> 
> It uses an eBPF TC classifier for discovering flows and handling the
> software fast path, and also creates hardware offload rules for flows.
> With that, hardware offloading for bridged LAN->WLAN flows is fully
> supported on MediaTek hardware with upstream kernels.
> 
> - Felix

Thanks, I've seen that already. Nice piece of software, but I'm not
running openwrt. I would like to see a solution implemented in the
kernel, so any operating system can use it.