From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Sridhar Samudrala Subject: Re: [net-next-2.6 PATCH 0/3 RFC] macvlan: MAC Address filtering support for passthru mode Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2011 21:30:43 -0700 Message-ID: <4E6D8AF3.7080406@us.ibm.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: "Michael S. Tsirkin" , netdev@vger.kernel.org, dragos.tatulea@gmail.com, arnd@arndb.de, dwang2@cisco.com, benve@cisco.com, kaber@trash.net, davem@davemloft.net, eric.dumazet@gmail.com, mchan@broadcom.com, kvm@vger.kernel.org To: Roopa Prabhu Return-path: In-Reply-To: Sender: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org On 9/11/2011 6:18 AM, Roopa Prabhu wrote: > > > On 9/11/11 2:44 AM, "Michael S. Tsirkin" wrote: > >>> AFAIK, though it might maintain a single filter table space in hw, hw does >>> know which filter belongs to which VF. And the OS driver does not need to do >>> anything special. The VF driver exposes a VF netdev. And any uc/mc addresses >>> registered with a VF netdev are registered with the hw by the driver. And hw >>> will filter and send only pkts that the VF has expressed interest in. >>> >>> No special filter partitioning in hw is required. >>> >>> Thanks, >>> Roopa >> Yes, but what I mean is, if the size of the single filter table >> is limited, we need to decide how many addresses is >> each guest allowed. If we let one guest ask for >> as many as it wants, it can lock others out. > Yes true. In these cases ie when the number of unicast addresses being > registered is more than it can handle, The VF driver will put the VF in > promiscuous mode (Or at least its supposed to do. I think all drivers do > that). > What does putting VF in promiscuous mode mean? How can the NIC decide which set of mac addresses are passed to the VF? Does it mean VF sees all the packets received by the NIC including packets destined for other VFs/PF? Thanks Sridhar