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From: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
To: davem@davemloft.net
Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org, edumazet@google.com, pabeni@redhat.com,
	andrew+netdev@lunn.ch, horms@kernel.org,
	Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
Subject: [PATCH net-next v2 2/2] docs: networking: mention that RSS table should be 4x the queue count
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2026 14:54:54 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260131225454.1225151-2-kuba@kernel.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20260131225454.1225151-1-kuba@kernel.org>

Spell out the recommendation that the RSS table should be
4x the queue count to avoid traffic imbalance. Include minor
rephrasing and removal of the explicit 128 entry example
since a 128 entry table is inadequate on modern machines.

Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
---
v2:
 - new patch

CC: edumazet@google.com
---
 Documentation/networking/scaling.rst | 12 ++++++++----
 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/networking/scaling.rst b/Documentation/networking/scaling.rst
index 99b6a61e5e31..0023afa530ec 100644
--- a/Documentation/networking/scaling.rst
+++ b/Documentation/networking/scaling.rst
@@ -38,11 +38,15 @@ that is not the focus of these techniques.
 The filter used in RSS is typically a hash function over the network
 and/or transport layer headers-- for example, a 4-tuple hash over
 IP addresses and TCP ports of a packet. The most common hardware
-implementation of RSS uses a 128-entry indirection table where each entry
+implementation of RSS uses an indirection table where each entry
 stores a queue number. The receive queue for a packet is determined
-by masking out the low order seven bits of the computed hash for the
-packet (usually a Toeplitz hash), taking this number as a key into the
-indirection table and reading the corresponding value.
+by indexing the indirection table with the low order bits of the
+computed hash for the packet (usually a Toeplitz hash).
+
+The indirection table helps even out the traffic distribution when queue
+count is not a power of two. NICs should provide an indirection table
+at least 4 times larger than the queue count. 4x table results in ~16%
+imbalance between the queues, which is acceptable for most applications.
 
 Some NICs support symmetric RSS hashing where, if the IP (source address,
 destination address) and TCP/UDP (source port, destination port) tuples
-- 
2.52.0


  reply	other threads:[~2026-01-31 22:54 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 12+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2026-01-31 22:54 [PATCH net-next v2 1/2] selftests: drv-net: rss: validate min RSS table size Jakub Kicinski
2026-01-31 22:54 ` Jakub Kicinski [this message]
2026-02-01  7:56   ` [PATCH net-next v2 2/2] docs: networking: mention that RSS table should be 4x the queue count Eric Dumazet
2026-02-03  1:10 ` [PATCH net-next v2 1/2] selftests: drv-net: rss: validate min RSS table size patchwork-bot+netdevbpf
2026-02-11 20:10 ` Yael Chemla
2026-02-11 21:43   ` Jakub Kicinski
2026-02-12  9:41     ` Tariq Toukan
2026-02-13  1:22       ` Jakub Kicinski
2026-02-16  8:28         ` Tariq Toukan
2026-02-17 21:57           ` Jakub Kicinski
2026-02-18  8:02             ` Tariq Toukan
2026-02-18 15:45               ` Jakub Kicinski

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