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Date:      Fri, 22 Jan 2016 02:41:03 +0300
From:      Alexander V. Chernikov <melifaro@freebsd.org>
To:        FreeBSD Net <freebsd-net@freebsd.org>, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, freebsd-arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   projects/routing announcement/status
Message-ID:  <6151261453419663@web14j.yandex.ru>

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I would like to introduce routing rework which started as projects/routing SVN branch.
It has been around for quite a long time, some of the code has made its way to HEAD, but there hasn't been any public announcements.

So, what is projects/routing about?

First, it is about bringing more scalability by solving most annoying problems on packet output path.
To be more specific, it eliminates 2 out of 4 locks, converts other 2 to rmlock(9) and adds infrastructure to reduce locking to single rmlock for certain traffic types.
With these changes, OS is able to forward 12MPPS on 16-core box for both IPv4/IPv6 which is 6-10 times better than stock HEAD.

Second, it eases hacking by avoiding direct access to route/lltable internals and providing higher level API instead.

Third, it is about bringing advanced features like route multipath, and even more speed by adding modular lookup API permitting to use different route lookup algorithms based on server role.

Description with graphs and links is available at: http://wiki.freebsd.org/ProjectsRoutingProposal
Used API is described in http://wiki.freebsd.org/ProjectsRoutingProposal/API
Current status is available at http://wiki.freebsd.org/ProjectsRoutingProposal/ConversionStatus

It is probably much more convenient to read project details on wiki, however I’ll try to summarise the most important things here (wiki readers can skip till the end).

Typical packet processing (forwarding for router, or output for web server) path consists of: 

doing routing lookup (radix read rwlock + routing entry (rte) mutex lock) 
(optionally) interface address (ifa) atomic refcount acquire/release 
doing link level entry (lle, llentry) lookup (afdata read rwlock + llentry read (or write) lock)


Most annoying one is the rtentry mutex. The only goal of this mutex is to provide rtentry refcounting so consumer code can use it without the risk of rtentrry being deleted.
We solve this by saving all needed data into on-stack optimised structure instead of refcounting.
Additionally, we are trying to pre-calculate the data we need to pass by using special next-hop structures instead of route entries.
Several different (in terms of returned info and relative overhead) functions for retrieving routing data are provided. 
Most of the consumers have already been switched to the new KPI. Actual output/forward path are not converted yet.

It should be noted, that since individual rtentries are not returned, it is not possible to do per-ifa output packet accouting (can be observed in netstat -s).

Route table lock is switched to ipfw-like dual-locking mode (read rmlock() for data path, rwlock for config changes, route export, etc..).
The reasons of having rwlock are to 1) provide serialization for things in control plane not directly used for data path and 2) avoid acquiring contested/sleeping locks for rmlock. See projects/routing r287078 for an example.

Lltable entry locks were eliminated in r291853, r292155.

Lltable lock is also planned to be converted to dual-locking model, with the similar reasoning.
However, instead of (ab)using AFDATA lock, it needs to be converted to per-lltable set of locks.


Open problems:
SCTP/Flowtable references rtentries directly. It is not possible to convert ip[6]_output() path without dealing with that.

Brief merge plan:
Discuss/merge new routing KPI for data path
Discuss/merge lltable dual-lock (WIP)
Discuss/merge  explicit nexthop changes
Discuss/merge IPv4/IPv6 output path (along with converted sctp/flowtable)
Discuss/merge route table dual-lock

Current outstanding reviews (I encourage you to take a look at these)

D5009 (IPv4 fast forwarding conversion) 
D5010 (IPv6 forwarding conversion) 
D4794 (Deal with per-ifa output counters) 
D4962 (new LLE lookup functions, no sockaddrs in lltable data path) 
D4751 (move all lltable code to separate files)




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