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0x19: Talk, Linux Kernel Support for IOAM Direct Exporting
by Jamal Hadi Salim 08 Feb '25

08 Feb '25

In Situ Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (IOAM) provides a way to collect telemetry data on devices, e.g., switches and routers, in so-called limited domains (e.g., a datacenter or a service provider). Recently standardized in the IETF, IOAM has been developed with various operation modes (i.e., option-types) in order to be suitable for as many potential use cases as possible. In this talk, Maxime Goffart, Justin Iurman, Emilien Wansart and Benoit Donnet describe the IOAM Direct EXporting (DEX) option kernel implementation which allows each network device on the path to locally aggregate and/or export telemetry data towards one or more collector(s). The implementation comes with support in ubiquitous user space tools. The authors will the implementation details and challenges as well as present performance results. Details: https://netdevconf.info/0x19/11 cheers, jamal

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0x19: Talk, Open Source Tooling for PHY Management and Testing
by Jamal Hadi Salim 08 Feb '25

08 Feb '25

One of the techniques the ethernet physical layer uses to achieve high speed rates is pulse-amplitude modulation(PAM). An implementation of a specific physical layer is commonly referred to as PHY. If you want to adjust the speed on the wire from say 1Gbps to 800Gbps (caveat emptor!) you pick a different set of signal ranges to be used for equalization for different combinations of bits on the wire. When a vendor ships you a NIC, these ranges will be embedded in the firmware and are fixed. If you have to interop then the idea is the peer NIC vendor has similar settings. How do you test these ranges? Lee Tragger says there are no open source tools available. Essentially, vendors provide their own proprietary tools to set equalization values and run pattern tests. In this talk, Lee will discuss whether setting equalization values and enabling pattern tests has matured enough across various vendors to develop a standard open source interface. Details: https://netdevconf.info/0x19/37 cheers, jamal

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0x19: Talk, Democratizing Far Edge Networking: Journey of Mainlining Wired and Wireless in Linux Kernel
by Jamal Hadi Salim 08 Feb '25

08 Feb '25

In this talk, Robert Marko will discuss real-world experiences and lessons learned from mainlining support for various wireless and wired SoCs, including Qualcomm's IPQ40xx platform, Marvell's Prestera switches, Microchip Sparx-5 and LAN969x family of products, as well as upcoming work on MaxLinear's SoCs. Robert will explore the challenges and benefits of using upstream Linux for edge networking, including the evolution of frameworks like switchdev for network switch ASICs and the wireless subsystem for access points. The talk will cover specific examples of upstreamed patches, discussing the technical aspects of bringing up new hardware support while maintaining clean abstractions. The speaker will examine how standardized Linux interfaces like switchdev can replace traditionally proprietary stack while providing equivalent functionality. Details: https://netdevconf.info/0x19/35 cheers, jamal

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0x19: Talk, The Battle Of The ZCs: Who is the prettiest of them all?
by Jamal Hadi Salim 07 Feb '25

07 Feb '25

In this talk, Nabil Bitar, Jamal Hadi Salim, Victor Nogueira and Pedro Tammela investigate the performance characteristics of two new high-performance application networking mechanisms in Linux: TCP devmem and IOURING zero copy. While TCP devmem is designed for zero copy to/from network/accelerators (such as GPUs), in order to compare to IOURING, the authors look at it from the perspective of client-server application; in the case of devmem, copying to/from user memory (udmabuf). Both these techniques are new to the Linux world and are still not fully integrated into Linux proper at time of the study - making them both challenging to deal with (kernel bugs popping up for example) and a bit of a mystery to most application writers. In addition to sharing the comparative results, the authors will shed some light for application writers to use these features. cheers, jamal

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0x19: Talk, The future of SO_TIMESTAMPING
by Jamal Hadi Salim 07 Feb '25

07 Feb '25

SO_TIMESTAMPING is key to debugging the network stack and end-to-end app latency. SO_TIMESTAMPING is key to sifting bugs that are network vs those that can be attributed to the kernel. Jason Xing believes there are a few areas that need optimization for usability and performance. These include: uAPI compatibility, extra system call overhead, and the need for application modification. His work is to resolve these issues. In this talk, Jason will discuss his eBPF extension which transparently equips every matched flow with SO_TIMESTAMPING without _modifying any application code_. More details: https://netdevconf.info/0x19/5 cheers, jamal

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0x19: Talk, IRQ Suspension: a new, efficient mechanism for packet delivery
by Jamal Hadi Salim 07 Feb '25

07 Feb '25

Traditionally apps have two choices: 1) trade increased CPU usage to get lower latency or 2) lower CPU usage at increased latency. The available choices were onerous because these mechanisms were only available interface-wide - that is until this work from Joe. In this talk, Joe Damato will discuss the IRQ Suspension feature which was recently merged in 6.13. The IRQ Suspension feature adds per-NAPI storage instances which enables more fine-grained tuning to the provided choices. Joe will describe the challenges overcame and explain when an application may decide to use the feature and how, exactly, to use it. Further discussion on current on-going work and possibly world production measurements, if available at time of the talk, will be shared. More details: https://netdevconf.info/0x19/4 cheers, jamal

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0x19 Tutorial, Debugging increasingly complex virtualized networks with Retis
by Jamal Hadi Salim 06 Feb '25

06 Feb '25

There are many complex paths in the network stack and more are being innovated at a fast pace. The consequence is debugging issues becomes significantly more difficult and time-consuming. Antoine Tenart, Paolo Valerio and Adrián Moreno created Retis to address this challenge and speed up network problem diagnosis. Come learn some of the challenges they faced in a desire to create versatile tooling leading to their main architectural decisions. The instructors will discuss the important features offered by Retis illustrated using simple to complex use cases. More info: https://netdevconf.info/0x19/21 cheers, jamal

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0x19: Talk, Traits: Rich Packet Metadata
by Jamal Hadi Salim 06 Feb '25

06 Feb '25

skb metadata like the ->mark while versatile have limited space. Arthur Fabre, Jakub Sitnicki and Jesper Brouer propose what they refer to as "packet traits”, a bespoke key-value store for metadata, optimized for use within the XDP code. User-space access to the store is provided natively through an extension of the Linux Sockets API In this talk they will present the API features and performance characteristics of the packet traits KV store, backed by the existing packet headroom. They'll also explain how a shared key space, combined with a registration API, addresses the challenges of metadata merging in scenarios like GRO packet coalescing and IP fragment reassembly. The talk will discuss the user API for reading and writing packet traits and the design of a networking uAPI extension that supports both connection-oriented (TCP) and connectionless (UDP) sockets. The authors invested effort in ensuring ease of adoption by aligning with established Linux networking API patterns. More details: https://netdevconf.info/0x19/sessions/talk/traits-rich-packet-metadata.html cheers, jamal

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0X19: Workshop, AI Networks - RoCEv2 and the role of "netdev"
by Jamal Hadi Salim 05 Feb '25

05 Feb '25

David Ahern and Leon Romanovsky will chair a workshop on AI Networks with a focus on RoCEv2 and the role of "netdev". AI training requires high bandwidth and low latency networks and networking stacks since training times are highly dependent on tail latency. At 800 Gbps ethernet link ports, with multiple ports per system, the inefficiencies of using socket based interfaces are abundantly exposed. For that reason any solution that uses these traditional network interfaces is incapable of meeting the desired high bandwidth and low latency requirements. In this workshop, David and Leon will discuss the RoCEv2 protocol for AI training networks and the role of “netdev” and compare that effort in contrast to proposals to shunt device QPs to TCP[1] and devmem[2], io_uring[3]. More details here: https://netdevconf.info/0x19/sessions/workshop/ai-networks-rocev2-and-the-r… cheers, jamal [1]https://netdevconf.info/0x16/sessions/talk/merging-the-networking-worlds.html [2]https://netdevconf.info/0x17/sessions/talk/device-memory-tcp.html [3] https://netdevconf.info/0x17/sessions/talk/fast-zc-rx-data-plane-using-io-u…

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0x19: BoF, Low Latency Networking
by Jamal Hadi Salim 05 Feb '25

05 Feb '25

PJ will chair a session on Low Latency Networking. Low Latency is an important requirement for certain application types. These application types don’t have to be similar. In many cases, they are quite different. Achieving low latency behaviors for these use cases can be reached in different ways. The BoF will include discussions on: -use cases and their latency constraints -causes of latency and jitter in Linux -How to achieve low latency in various scenarios and setups cheers, jamal

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