RE: TOE, etc.

RE: TOE, etc.

[Caitlin Bestler]

Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Caitlin Bestler wrote:
>> netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org wrote:
>>> From: Steve Wise <swise@opengridcomputing.com>
>>> Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 09:54:57 -0500
>>> 
>>>> Doesn't iSCSI have this same issue?
>>> Software iSCSI implementations don't have the issue because they go
>>> through the stack using normal sockets and normal device send and
>>> receive.
>> 
>> But hardware iSCSI implementations, which already exist, do not work
>> through normal sockets.
> 
> No, they work through normal SCSI stack...
> 
> 	Jeff

Correct.

But they then interface to the network using none of the network stack.
The normal SCSI stack does not control that it any way.

NFS over RDMA is part of the file system. That doesn't change the fact
that it's use of IP Addresses needs to be co-ordinated with the network
stack, and indeed that address based authentication *assumes* that this
is the case. (and yes, there are preferable means of authentication, but
authenticating based on IP address is already supported).

But back on the main point, if implementing SCSI services over a
TCP connection is acceptable even though it does not use a kernel
socket, why would it not be acceptable to implement RDMA services
over a TCP connection without using a kernel socket?

Re: TOE, etc.

[Jeff Garzik]

Caitlin Bestler wrote:
> Jeff Garzik wrote:
>> Caitlin Bestler wrote:
>>> But hardware iSCSI implementations, which already exist, do not work
>>> through normal sockets.

>> No, they work through normal SCSI stack...

> Correct.
> 
> But they then interface to the network using none of the network stack.
> The normal SCSI stack does not control that it any way.

Correct.  And the network stack is completely unaware of whatever IP 
addresses, ARP tables, routing tables, etc. it is using.


> NFS over RDMA is part of the file system. That doesn't change the fact
> that it's use of IP Addresses needs to be co-ordinated with the network
> stack, and indeed that address based authentication *assumes* that this
> is the case. (and yes, there are preferable means of authentication, but
> authenticating based on IP address is already supported).

Sounds quite broken to me.


> But back on the main point, if implementing SCSI services over a
> TCP connection is acceptable even though it does not use a kernel
> socket, why would it not be acceptable to implement RDMA services
> over a TCP connection without using a kernel socket?

Because SCSI doesn't force nasty hooks into the net stack to allow for 
sharing of resources with a proprietary black box of unknown quality.

	Jeff

Re: TOE, etc.

[Steve Wise]

> 
> > But back on the main point, if implementing SCSI services over a
> > TCP connection is acceptable even though it does not use a kernel
> > socket, why would it not be acceptable to implement RDMA services
> > over a TCP connection without using a kernel socket?
> 
> Because SCSI doesn't force nasty hooks into the net stack to allow for 
> sharing of resources with a proprietary black box of unknown quality.
> 
> 	Jeff
> 

The netevent notifier patch in question seemed to be reasonable hooks
for notifying kernel and user mode modules of certain network events.
In fact, it went through 3 review cycles and was improved by feedback
from Dave and others.  eg: It was integrated with netlink to provide
user mode notifications.  

Then someone says 'TOE' and suddenly the hooks are nasty?


Steve.

RE: TOE, etc.

[Caitlin Bestler]

Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Caitlin Bestler wrote:
>> Jeff Garzik wrote:
>>> Caitlin Bestler wrote:
>>>> But hardware iSCSI implementations, which already exist, do not
>>>> work through normal sockets.
> 
>>> No, they work through normal SCSI stack...
> 
>> Correct.
>> 
>> But they then interface to the network using none of the network
>> stack. The normal SCSI stack does not control that it any way.
> 
> Correct.  And the network stack is completely unaware of
> whatever IP addresses, ARP tables, routing tables, etc. it is using.
> 
> 
>> NFS over RDMA is part of the file system. That doesn't change the
>> fact that it's use of IP Addresses needs to be co-ordinated with the
>> network stack, and indeed that address based authentication
>> *assumes* that this is the case. (and yes, there are preferable
>> means of authentication, but authenticating based on IP address is
>> already supported). 
> 
> Sounds quite broken to me.
> 
> 
>> But back on the main point, if implementing SCSI services over a
>> TCP connection is acceptable even though it does not use a kernel
>> socket, why would it not be acceptable to implement RDMA services
>> over a TCP connection without using a kernel socket?
> 
> Because SCSI doesn't force nasty hooks into the net stack to
> allow for
> sharing of resources with a proprietary black box of unknown quality.
> 
> 	Jeff

RDMA can also solve all of these problems on its own. Complete with
giving the network administrator *no* conventional controls over the
IP address being used for RDMA services.

That means no standard ability to monitor connections, no standard
ability to control which connections are made with whom.

That is better? 

You seem to be practically demanding that RDMA build an entire
parallel stack.

Worse, that *each* RDMA vendor build an entire parallel stack.

Open source being what it is, that is not terribly difficult.
But exactly how does this benefit Linux users?

The proposed subscriptions are not about sharing *resources*, they
share *information* with device drivers. The quality of each
RDMA device driver will be just as known as for a SCSI driver,
an InfiniBand HCA driver, a graphics driver or a plain Ethernet
driver.

RE: TOE, etc.

[Caitlin Bestler]

netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org wrote:
> From: Steve Wise <swise@opengridcomputing.com>
> Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 09:54:57 -0500
> 
>> Doesn't iSCSI have this same issue?
> 
> Software iSCSI implementations don't have the issue because
> they go through the stack using normal sockets and normal
> device send and receive.

But hardware iSCSI implementations, which already exist,
do not work through normal sockets.

Re: TOE, etc.

[Jeff Garzik]

Caitlin Bestler wrote:
> netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org wrote:
>> From: Steve Wise <swise@opengridcomputing.com>
>> Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 09:54:57 -0500
>>
>>> Doesn't iSCSI have this same issue?
>> Software iSCSI implementations don't have the issue because
>> they go through the stack using normal sockets and normal
>> device send and receive.
> 
> But hardware iSCSI implementations, which already exist,
> do not work through normal sockets.

No, they work through normal SCSI stack...

	Jeff

RE: TOE, etc.

[Caitlin Bestler]

Herbert Xu wrote:

> 
> Yes, however I think the same argument could be applied to TOE.
> 
> With their RDMA NIC, we'll have TCP/SCTP connections that
> bypass netfilter, tc, IPsec, AF_PACKET/tcpdump and the rest
> of our stack while at the same time it is using the same IP
> address as us and deciding what packets we will or won't see.
> 

The whole point of the patches that opengrid has proposed is to
allow control of these issues to remain with the kernel. That is
where the ownership of the IP address logically resides, and system
administrators will expect to be able to use one set of tools to
control what is done with a given IP address.

The bypassing is already going on with iSCSI devices and with
InfiniBand devices that use IP addresses. An RDMA/IP device just
makes it harder to ignore this problem, but the problem was already
there. SDP over IB is presented to Linux users essentially as a
TOE service. Connections are made with IP and socket semantics,
and yet there is no co-ordination on routes/netfilter/etc.

I'll state right up front that I think stateful offload, when
co-ordinated with the OS, is better than stateless offload --
especially at 10G speeds.

But for plain TCP connections there are stateless offloads
available. As a product architect I am already seeking as
many ways as possible to support stateless offload as efficiently
as possible to keep that option viable for Linux users for as
high of a rate as possible. That is why we are very interested
in exploring a hardware friendly definition of vj_netchannels.

But with RDMA things are different. There is no such thing as
stateless RDMA. It is not RDMA over TCP that requires stateful
offload, it is RDMA itself. RDMA over InfiniBand is just as
much of a stateful offload as RDMA over TCP.

It is possible to build RDMA over TCP as a service that merely
uses memory mappping services in a mysterious way but is not
integrated with the network stack at all. That is essentially
how RDMA over IB is currently working.

But I believe that integrating control over the IP address,
and the associated netfilter/routing/arp/pmtu/etc issues,
is the correct path. This logic should not be duplicated,
and its control must not be split.

Re: [PATCH Round 3 0/2][RFC] Network Event Notifier Mechanism

[Herbert Xu]

On Tue, Jun 27, 2006 at 11:24:25PM -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
>
> I don't see how that position has changed?
> 
> http://linux-net.osdl.org/index.php/TOE

Well I must say that RDMA over TCP smells very much like TOE.  They've
got an ARP table, a routing table, and presumably a TCP stack.

Cheers,
-- 
Visit Openswan at http://www.openswan.org/
Email: Herbert Xu ~{PmV>HI~} <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
Home Page: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/
PGP Key: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/pubkey.txt

TOE, etc. (was Re: [PATCH Round 3 0/2][RFC] Network Event Notifier Mechanism)

[Jeff Garzik]

Herbert Xu wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 27, 2006 at 11:24:25PM -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
>> I don't see how that position has changed?
>>
>> http://linux-net.osdl.org/index.php/TOE
> 
> Well I must say that RDMA over TCP smells very much like TOE.  They've
> got an ARP table, a routing table, and presumably a TCP stack.

A PCI device that presents itself as a SCSI controller, but under the 
hood is really iSCSI-over-TCP smells like TOE.  Running a virtualized 
Linux guest on top of a proprietary stack [which provides networking 
services to guests] also smells like TOE.  :)

If a TOE vendors wants to do TOE in a way that is transparent to the 
kernel, more power to them.  Such non-Linux TCP stack solutions still 
suffer many of the problems listed at the web page above, but at least 
they impose no burden on kernel maintenance.

i.e. we really _do not_ want to get into the habit of co-managing arp 
tables, routing tables, filtering rules, and dozens of other such 
resources with multiple remote, independent TCP stack.  We have enough 
complexity as it is today, coordinating between the random variations of 
SMP, uniprocessor, and NUMA machines out there.  Not to mention 
competing with under-the-hood firmware actions (ASF) on NICs.

As an aside, RDMA over TCP just seems silly.  TCP was _not_ meant to do 
the things that RDMA users want.  The infiniband/RDMA programming model 
is an ultra-low-latency polling model where one or two apps are allowed 
to completely consume the machine, either busy-waiting or processing 
messages.

Unfortunately I don't have more details, so you just get a generalized 
rant :)

	Jeff

Re: TOE, etc. (was Re: [PATCH Round 3 0/2][RFC] Network Event Notifier Mechanism)

[Herbert Xu]

On Wed, Jun 28, 2006 at 12:18:25AM -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> 
> A PCI device that presents itself as a SCSI controller, but under the 
> hood is really iSCSI-over-TCP smells like TOE.  Running a virtualized 
> Linux guest on top of a proprietary stack [which provides networking 
> services to guests] also smells like TOE.  :)

Agreed.  However, when they start adding hooks to the ARP table, the
routing table, and PMTU management, it begs the question what more is
there to add for TOE (well, user-space driven TOE at least)?
 
> Unfortunately I don't have more details, so you just get a generalized 
> rant :)

OK, the patch under discussion here adds hooks to all the stuff in the
previous paragraph for the purpose of RDMA over TCP (well I must say
that the exact RDMA application/hardware has never been clearly given
but this is what I can gather from the previous posts).

Put it another way, I think the dividing line between TOE and iSCSI or
virtualisation is exactly the interface between them and the Linux kernel.
If the interface is an existing one such as SCSI or standard IP then it's
OK.  However, when it starts poking in the guts of the Linux stack I'd say
that it has crossed the line.

Cheers,
-- 
Visit Openswan at http://www.openswan.org/
Email: Herbert Xu ~{PmV>HI~} <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
Home Page: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/
PGP Key: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/pubkey.txt

Re: TOE, etc.

[David Miller]

From: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 14:29:59 +1000

> On Wed, Jun 28, 2006 at 12:18:25AM -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> > 
> > A PCI device that presents itself as a SCSI controller, but under the 
> > hood is really iSCSI-over-TCP smells like TOE.  Running a virtualized 
> > Linux guest on top of a proprietary stack [which provides networking 
> > services to guests] also smells like TOE.  :)
> 
> Agreed.  However, when they start adding hooks to the ARP table, the
> routing table, and PMTU management, it begs the question what more is
> there to add for TOE (well, user-space driven TOE at least)?

Socket state, and that is one thing I don't see them doing yet.

> Put it another way, I think the dividing line between TOE and iSCSI or
> virtualisation is exactly the interface between them and the Linux kernel.
> If the interface is an existing one such as SCSI or standard IP then it's
> OK.  However, when it starts poking in the guts of the Linux stack I'd say
> that it has crossed the line.

Yeah, it's starting to smell really bad.

But we have to realize they've already been given %95 of the
interfaces they need to speak IP using our routes and our neighbour
entries.

Right?

Re: TOE, etc.

[Herbert Xu]

On Tue, Jun 27, 2006 at 09:43:23PM -0700, David Miller wrote:
> 
> Socket state, and that is one thing I don't see them doing yet.

I wonder what happens when the Linux TCP stack attempts to open a
connection to a remote host when that connection is already open
in the RDMA NIC?  For that matter what happens if a Linux application
decides to listen on a TCP port already listened on by the RDMA
NIC?

The only saving grace is that they're only doing RDMA rather than
arbitrary TCP.  However, exactly the same infrastructure can be used
to do arbitrary TCP should they wish to.
 
> But we have to realize they've already been given %95 of the
> interfaces they need to speak IP using our routes and our neighbour
> entries.
> 
> Right?

Yes, however I think the same argument could be applied to TOE.

With their RDMA NIC, we'll have TCP/SCTP connections that bypass
netfilter, tc, IPsec, AF_PACKET/tcpdump and the rest of our stack
while at the same time it is using the same IP address as us and
deciding what packets we will or won't see.

Cheers,
-- 
Visit Openswan at http://www.openswan.org/
Email: Herbert Xu ~{PmV>HI~} <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
Home Page: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/
PGP Key: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/pubkey.txt

Re: TOE, etc.

[David Miller]

From: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 15:35:54 +1000

> With their RDMA NIC, we'll have TCP/SCTP connections that bypass
> netfilter, tc, IPsec, AF_PACKET/tcpdump and the rest of our stack
> while at the same time it is using the same IP address as us and
> deciding what packets we will or won't see.

That's true.  I don't think we should really add any more
help for these kinds of things then.

Re: TOE, etc.

[Steve Wise]

On Wed, 2006-06-28 at 15:35 +1000, Herbert Xu wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 27, 2006 at 09:43:23PM -0700, David Miller wrote:
> > 
> > Socket state, and that is one thing I don't see them doing yet.
> 
> I wonder what happens when the Linux TCP stack attempts to open a
> connection to a remote host when that connection is already open
> in the RDMA NIC?  For that matter what happens if a Linux application
> decides to listen on a TCP port already listened on by the RDMA
> NIC?
> 
> The only saving grace is that they're only doing RDMA rather than
> arbitrary TCP.  However, exactly the same infrastructure can be used
> to do arbitrary TCP should they wish to.
>  
> > But we have to realize they've already been given %95 of the
> > interfaces they need to speak IP using our routes and our neighbour
> > entries.
> > 
> > Right?
> 
> Yes, however I think the same argument could be applied to TOE.
> 
> With their RDMA NIC, we'll have TCP/SCTP connections that bypass
> netfilter, tc, IPsec, AF_PACKET/tcpdump and the rest of our stack
> while at the same time it is using the same IP address as us and
> deciding what packets we will or won't see.
> 

Doesn't iSCSI have the same issue?  No netfilter, IPsec, tcpdump, etc...

Re: TOE, etc.

[Steve Wise]

On Wed, 2006-06-28 at 15:35 +1000, Herbert Xu wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 27, 2006 at 09:43:23PM -0700, David Miller wrote:
> > 
> > Socket state, and that is one thing I don't see them doing yet.
> 
> I wonder what happens when the Linux TCP stack attempts to open a
> connection to a remote host when that connection is already open
> in the RDMA NIC?  For that matter what happens if a Linux application
> decides to listen on a TCP port already listened on by the RDMA
> NIC?
> 

This issue would have to be handled by using seperate IP addresses for
RDMA connections vs native stack TCP.

Consider NFS-RDMA server.  Through administration, it would be
configured to listen on the specific rdma ip addresses, and the native
stack tcp ip addresses and thus support both TCP and RDMA NFS
connections.

There are definitely issues with this that could be resolved via tighter
integration, but that seems to not be a goal of the linux community at
this time...


> The only saving grace is that they're only doing RDMA rather than
> arbitrary TCP.  However, exactly the same infrastructure can be used
> to do arbitrary TCP should they wish to.
>  
> > But we have to realize they've already been given %95 of the
> > interfaces they need to speak IP using our routes and our neighbour
> > entries.
> > 
> > Right?
> 
> Yes, however I think the same argument could be applied to TOE.
> 
> With their RDMA NIC, we'll have TCP/SCTP connections that bypass
> netfilter, tc, IPsec, AF_PACKET/tcpdump and the rest of our stack
> while at the same time it is using the same IP address as us and
> deciding what packets we will or won't see.
> 


Doesn't iSCSI have this same issue?

Steve.

Re: TOE, etc.

[David Miller]

From: Steve Wise <swise@opengridcomputing.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 09:54:57 -0500

> Doesn't iSCSI have this same issue?

Software iSCSI implementations don't have the issue because
they go through the stack using normal sockets and normal
device send and receive.

Re: TOE, etc.

[Steve Wise]

On Wed, 2006-06-28 at 11:36 -0700, David Miller wrote:
> From: Steve Wise <swise@opengridcomputing.com>
> Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 09:54:57 -0500
> 
> > Doesn't iSCSI have this same issue?
> 
> Software iSCSI implementations don't have the issue because
> they go through the stack using normal sockets and normal
> device send and receive.
> -

Right.  I was assuming, in this thread we were talking about iSCSI
devices where the TCP stack is in HW/FW on the adapter...

Steve.