[Devel] Re: [patch 2/6] [Network namespace] Network device sharing by view

[Eric W. Biederman]

Herbert Poetzl <herbert at 13thfloor.at> writes:

> On Mon, Jun 26, 2006 at 01:35:15PM -0600, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
>> Herbert Poetzl <herbert at 13thfloor.at> writes:
>> 
>
> yes, but you will not be able to apply policy on
> the parent, restricting the child networking in a
> proper way without jumping through hoops ...

?  I don't understand where you are coming from.
There is no restriction on where you can apply policy.

>> I really do not believe we have a hotpath issue, if this
>> is implemented properly. Benchmarks of course need to be taken,
>> to prove this.
>
> I'm fine with proper testing and good numbers here
> but until then, I can only consider it a prototype

We are taking the first steps to get this all sorted out.
I think what we have is more than a prototype but less then
the final implementation.  Call it the very first draft version.

>> There are only two places a sane implementation should show issues.
>> - When the access to a pointer goes through a pointer to find
>>   that global variable.
>> - When doing a lookup in a hash table we need to look at an additional
>>   field to verify a hash match.  Because having a completely separate
>>   hash table is likely too expensive.
>> 
>> If that can be shown to really slow down packets on the hot path I am
>> willing to consider other possibilities. Until then I think we are on
>> path to the simplest and most powerful version of building a network
>> namespace usable by containers.
>
> keep in mind that you actually have three kinds
> of network traffic on a typical host/guest system:
>
>  - traffic between unit and outside
>    - host traffic should be quite minimal
>    - guest traffic will be quite high
>
>  - traffic between host and guest
>    probably minimal too (only for shared services)
>
>  - traffic between guests
>    can be as high (or even higher) than the
>    outbound traffic, just think web guest and
>    database guest

Interesting.

>> The routing between network namespaces does have the potential to be
>> more expensive than just a packet trivially coming off the wire into a
>> socket.
>
> IMHO the routing between network namespaces should
> not require more than the current local traffic
> does (i.e. you should be able to achieve loopback
> speed within an insignificant tolerance) and not
> nearly the time required for on-wire stuff ...

That assumes on the wire stuff is noticeably slower.
You can achieve over 1GB/s on some networks.

But I agree that the cost should resemble the current
loopback device.  I have seen nothing that suggests
it is not.

>> However that is fundamentally from a lack of hardware. If the
>> rest works smarter filters in the drivers should enable to remove the
>> cost.
>> 
>> Basically it is just a matter of:
>> if (dest_mac == my_mac1) it is for device 1.
>> If (dest_mac == my_mac2) it is for device 2.
>> etc.
>
> hmm, so you plan on providing a different MAC for
> each guest? how should that be handled from the
> user PoV? you cannot simply make up MACs as you
> go, and, depending on the network card, operation
> in promisc mode might be slower than for a given
> set (maybe only one) MAC, no?

The speed is a factor certainly.  As for making up
macs.  There is a local assignment bit that you can set.
With that set it is just a matter of using a decent random
number generator.  The kernel already does this is some places.

>> At a small count of macs it is trivial to understand it will go
>> fast for a larger count of macs it only works with a good data
>> structure.  We don't hit any extra cache lines of the packet,
>> and the above test can be collapsed with other routing lookup tests.
>
> well, I'm absolutely not against flexibility or
> full virtualization, but the proposed 'routing'
> on the host effectively doubles the time the
> packet spends in the network stack(s), so I can
> not believe that this approach would not add
> (significant) overhead to the hot path ...

It might, but I am pretty certain it won't double
the cost, as you don't do 2 full network stack traversals.
And even at a full doubling I doubt it will affect bandwith
or latency very much.  If it does we have a lot more to optimize
in the network stack than just this code.

Eric