From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Jamal Hadi Salim <jhs@mojatatu.com>
Subject: Re: [patch net-next RFC 0/4] introduce infrastructure for support
 of switch chip datapath
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 19:07:35 -0400
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Cc: Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@gmail.com>,
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	Cong Wang <xiyou.wangcong@gmail.com>,
	John Fastabend <john.r.fastabend@intel.com>,
	Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>,
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To: Jiri Pirko <jiri@resnulli.us>
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On 03/22/14 05:48, Jiri Pirko wrote:
> Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 01:04:20PM CET, jhs@mojatatu.com wrote:

> Hmm. This got me thinking about netdev and switches well and perhaps the
> switchdev api could be mostly implemented by couple of more ndos and
> feature flags. That way we could stick to your immortal netdev :)
>
>

Perhaps ;->

>>
>> In my view: that (immortal) device for L2/bridging is the bridge or
>> maybe a more barebone version of the bridge (since it has gained a
>> little more weight in recent times).
>
> Well, I do not think that bridge is ideal abstraction for modern switch
> chips. Bridge is very limited.
>

True - but i was more thinking of being inclusive of the smaller
devices. They are mostly L2 only and in very limited scope. And thats
probably 95% of the population. The things you are talking about
are very high end and they can do more. Florian's taxanomy was useful.

> But I don't necessary think it is needed to "mask" as a bride or mimic a
> bridge in any way. DSA does not do that either.
>

I am open to the idea of exposing ports instead of a bridge.
Such ports could be aggregate together to form a bridge when the
hardware is capable.

> switchdev tries to provide an API. Who takes it and use it is up to us.
> OVS, bridge or whatever.
>

As long as you maintain the current user tools I am happy.
Can i run all my iproute2 tools?


>
> Sure, send us a link please.
>

I will post it somewhere. The starting point was L2; if we decide to
go a different direction it may require a different approach.


cheers,
jamal