Subject: Re: L2 switching in igb

From: Alexander Duyck <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:30:09 -0700

Or Gerlitz wrote:
> Note that VEPA mode is a characteristic of the PF, correct? and the PF 
> resides in the host kernel. Also, as I wrote you earlier, I do see many 
> schemes where a VF spawned in the host kernel IS very useful, and as 
> such I'd be happy to continue the discussion on the approach suggested 
> by Dave and Stephen, can you provide a pointer? (thanks).
> 
> Or.

You are correct, the vSwitch can basically do VEPA by disabling local 
loopback enable bit in the DTXSWC register.  This would force all 
traffic from the PF/VFs out the lan physical port and from the lan 
physical port to the appropriate PF/VFs without doing any switching in 
between PF/VFs.

I am currently thinking what probably needs to be done is to add an 
rtnl_link_ops interface to handle vSwitch configuration that could then 
be applied to the igb netdevs that support VEPA/vSwitch technologies.  A 
subset of that interface could then be dedicated to VF configuration to 
handle things such as spawning VFs, setting the default mac addresses, 
security controls, etc.

Thanks,

Alex