aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/Documentation/networking/dsa/dsa.txt
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/networking/dsa/dsa.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/networking/dsa/dsa.txt597
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 597 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/networking/dsa/dsa.txt b/Documentation/networking/dsa/dsa.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index 101f2b2c69ad..000000000000
--- a/Documentation/networking/dsa/dsa.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,597 +0,0 @@
-Distributed Switch Architecture
-===============================
-
-Introduction
-============
-
-This document describes the Distributed Switch Architecture (DSA) subsystem
-design principles, limitations, interactions with other subsystems, and how to
-develop drivers for this subsystem as well as a TODO for developers interested
-in joining the effort.
-
-Design principles
-=================
-
-The Distributed Switch Architecture is a subsystem which was primarily designed
-to support Marvell Ethernet switches (MV88E6xxx, a.k.a Linkstreet product line)
-using Linux, but has since evolved to support other vendors as well.
-
-The original philosophy behind this design was to be able to use unmodified
-Linux tools such as bridge, iproute2, ifconfig to work transparently whether
-they configured/queried a switch port network device or a regular network
-device.
-
-An Ethernet switch is typically comprised of multiple front-panel ports, and one
-or more CPU or management port. The DSA subsystem currently relies on the
-presence of a management port connected to an Ethernet controller capable of
-receiving Ethernet frames from the switch. This is a very common setup for all
-kinds of Ethernet switches found in Small Home and Office products: routers,
-gateways, or even top-of-the rack switches. This host Ethernet controller will
-be later referred to as "master" and "cpu" in DSA terminology and code.
-
-The D in DSA stands for Distributed, because the subsystem has been designed
-with the ability to configure and manage cascaded switches on top of each other
-using upstream and downstream Ethernet links between switches. These specific
-ports are referred to as "dsa" ports in DSA terminology and code. A collection
-of multiple switches connected to each other is called a "switch tree".
-
-For each front-panel port, DSA will create specialized network devices which are
-used as controlling and data-flowing endpoints for use by the Linux networking
-stack. These specialized network interfaces are referred to as "slave" network
-interfaces in DSA terminology and code.
-
-The ideal case for using DSA is when an Ethernet switch supports a "switch tag"
-which is a hardware feature making the switch insert a specific tag for each
-Ethernet frames it received to/from specific ports to help the management
-interface figure out:
-
-- what port is this frame coming from
-- what was the reason why this frame got forwarded
-- how to send CPU originated traffic to specific ports
-
-The subsystem does support switches not capable of inserting/stripping tags, but
-the features might be slightly limited in that case (traffic separation relies
-on Port-based VLAN IDs).
-
-Note that DSA does not currently create network interfaces for the "cpu" and
-"dsa" ports because:
-
-- the "cpu" port is the Ethernet switch facing side of the management
- controller, and as such, would create a duplication of feature, since you
- would get two interfaces for the same conduit: master netdev, and "cpu" netdev
-
-- the "dsa" port(s) are just conduits between two or more switches, and as such
- cannot really be used as proper network interfaces either, only the
- downstream, or the top-most upstream interface makes sense with that model
-
-Switch tagging protocols
-------------------------
-
-DSA currently supports 5 different tagging protocols, and a tag-less mode as
-well. The different protocols are implemented in:
-
-net/dsa/tag_trailer.c: Marvell's 4 trailer tag mode (legacy)
-net/dsa/tag_dsa.c: Marvell's original DSA tag
-net/dsa/tag_edsa.c: Marvell's enhanced DSA tag
-net/dsa/tag_brcm.c: Broadcom's 4 bytes tag
-net/dsa/tag_qca.c: Qualcomm's 2 bytes tag
-
-The exact format of the tag protocol is vendor specific, but in general, they
-all contain something which:
-
-- identifies which port the Ethernet frame came from/should be sent to
-- provides a reason why this frame was forwarded to the management interface
-
-Master network devices
-----------------------
-
-Master network devices are regular, unmodified Linux network device drivers for
-the CPU/management Ethernet interface. Such a driver might occasionally need to
-know whether DSA is enabled (e.g.: to enable/disable specific offload features),
-but the DSA subsystem has been proven to work with industry standard drivers:
-e1000e, mv643xx_eth etc. without having to introduce modifications to these
-drivers. Such network devices are also often referred to as conduit network
-devices since they act as a pipe between the host processor and the hardware
-Ethernet switch.
-
-Networking stack hooks
-----------------------
-
-When a master netdev is used with DSA, a small hook is placed in in the
-networking stack is in order to have the DSA subsystem process the Ethernet
-switch specific tagging protocol. DSA accomplishes this by registering a
-specific (and fake) Ethernet type (later becoming skb->protocol) with the
-networking stack, this is also known as a ptype or packet_type. A typical
-Ethernet Frame receive sequence looks like this:
-
-Master network device (e.g.: e1000e):
-
-Receive interrupt fires:
-- receive function is invoked
-- basic packet processing is done: getting length, status etc.
-- packet is prepared to be processed by the Ethernet layer by calling
- eth_type_trans
-
-net/ethernet/eth.c:
-
-eth_type_trans(skb, dev)
- if (dev->dsa_ptr != NULL)
- -> skb->protocol = ETH_P_XDSA
-
-drivers/net/ethernet/*:
-
-netif_receive_skb(skb)
- -> iterate over registered packet_type
- -> invoke handler for ETH_P_XDSA, calls dsa_switch_rcv()
-
-net/dsa/dsa.c:
- -> dsa_switch_rcv()
- -> invoke switch tag specific protocol handler in
- net/dsa/tag_*.c
-
-net/dsa/tag_*.c:
- -> inspect and strip switch tag protocol to determine originating port
- -> locate per-port network device
- -> invoke eth_type_trans() with the DSA slave network device
- -> invoked netif_receive_skb()
-
-Past this point, the DSA slave network devices get delivered regular Ethernet
-frames that can be processed by the networking stack.
-
-Slave network devices
----------------------
-
-Slave network devices created by DSA are stacked on top of their master network
-device, each of these network interfaces will be responsible for being a
-controlling and data-flowing end-point for each front-panel port of the switch.
-These interfaces are specialized in order to:
-
-- insert/remove the switch tag protocol (if it exists) when sending traffic
- to/from specific switch ports
-- query the switch for ethtool operations: statistics, link state,
- Wake-on-LAN, register dumps...
-- external/internal PHY management: link, auto-negotiation etc.
-
-These slave network devices have custom net_device_ops and ethtool_ops function
-pointers which allow DSA to introduce a level of layering between the networking
-stack/ethtool, and the switch driver implementation.
-
-Upon frame transmission from these slave network devices, DSA will look up which
-switch tagging protocol is currently registered with these network devices, and
-invoke a specific transmit routine which takes care of adding the relevant
-switch tag in the Ethernet frames.
-
-These frames are then queued for transmission using the master network device
-ndo_start_xmit() function, since they contain the appropriate switch tag, the
-Ethernet switch will be able to process these incoming frames from the
-management interface and delivers these frames to the physical switch port.
-
-Graphical representation
-------------------------
-
-Summarized, this is basically how DSA looks like from a network device
-perspective:
-
-
- |---------------------------
- | CPU network device (eth0)|
- ----------------------------
- | <tag added by switch |
- | |
- | |
- | tag added by CPU> |
- |--------------------------------------------|
- | Switch driver |
- |--------------------------------------------|
- || || ||
- |-------| |-------| |-------|
- | sw0p0 | | sw0p1 | | sw0p2 |
- |-------| |-------| |-------|
-
-Slave MDIO bus
---------------
-
-In order to be able to read to/from a switch PHY built into it, DSA creates a
-slave MDIO bus which allows a specific switch driver to divert and intercept
-MDIO reads/writes towards specific PHY addresses. In most MDIO-connected
-switches, these functions would utilize direct or indirect PHY addressing mode
-to return standard MII registers from the switch builtin PHYs, allowing the PHY
-library and/or to return link status, link partner pages, auto-negotiation
-results etc..
-
-For Ethernet switches which have both external and internal MDIO busses, the
-slave MII bus can be utilized to mux/demux MDIO reads and writes towards either
-internal or external MDIO devices this switch might be connected to: internal
-PHYs, external PHYs, or even external switches.
-
-Data structures
----------------
-
-DSA data structures are defined in include/net/dsa.h as well as
-net/dsa/dsa_priv.h.
-
-dsa_chip_data: platform data configuration for a given switch device, this
-structure describes a switch device's parent device, its address, as well as
-various properties of its ports: names/labels, and finally a routing table
-indication (when cascading switches)
-
-dsa_platform_data: platform device configuration data which can reference a
-collection of dsa_chip_data structure if multiples switches are cascaded, the
-master network device this switch tree is attached to needs to be referenced
-
-dsa_switch_tree: structure assigned to the master network device under
-"dsa_ptr", this structure references a dsa_platform_data structure as well as
-the tagging protocol supported by the switch tree, and which receive/transmit
-function hooks should be invoked, information about the directly attached switch
-is also provided: CPU port. Finally, a collection of dsa_switch are referenced
-to address individual switches in the tree.
-
-dsa_switch: structure describing a switch device in the tree, referencing a
-dsa_switch_tree as a backpointer, slave network devices, master network device,
-and a reference to the backing dsa_switch_ops
-
-dsa_switch_ops: structure referencing function pointers, see below for a full
-description.
-
-Design limitations
-==================
-
-DSA is a platform device driver
--------------------------------
-
-DSA is implemented as a DSA platform device driver which is convenient because
-it will register the entire DSA switch tree attached to a master network device
-in one-shot, facilitating the device creation and simplifying the device driver
-model a bit, this comes however with a number of limitations:
-
-- building DSA and its switch drivers as modules is currently not working
-- the device driver parenting does not necessarily reflect the original
- bus/device the switch can be created from
-- supporting non-MDIO and non-MMIO (platform) switches is not possible
-
-Limits on the number of devices and ports
------------------------------------------
-
-DSA currently limits the number of maximum switches within a tree to 4
-(DSA_MAX_SWITCHES), and the number of ports per switch to 12 (DSA_MAX_PORTS).
-These limits could be extended to support larger configurations would this need
-arise.
-
-Lack of CPU/DSA network devices
--------------------------------
-
-DSA does not currently create slave network devices for the CPU or DSA ports, as
-described before. This might be an issue in the following cases:
-
-- inability to fetch switch CPU port statistics counters using ethtool, which
- can make it harder to debug MDIO switch connected using xMII interfaces
-
-- inability to configure the CPU port link parameters based on the Ethernet
- controller capabilities attached to it: http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/509806/
-
-- inability to configure specific VLAN IDs / trunking VLANs between switches
- when using a cascaded setup
-
-Common pitfalls using DSA setups
---------------------------------
-
-Once a master network device is configured to use DSA (dev->dsa_ptr becomes
-non-NULL), and the switch behind it expects a tagging protocol, this network
-interface can only exclusively be used as a conduit interface. Sending packets
-directly through this interface (e.g.: opening a socket using this interface)
-will not make us go through the switch tagging protocol transmit function, so
-the Ethernet switch on the other end, expecting a tag will typically drop this
-frame.
-
-Slave network devices check that the master network device is UP before allowing
-you to administratively bring UP these slave network devices. A common
-configuration mistake is forgetting to bring UP the master network device first.
-
-Interactions with other subsystems
-==================================
-
-DSA currently leverages the following subsystems:
-
-- MDIO/PHY library: drivers/net/phy/phy.c, mdio_bus.c
-- Switchdev: net/switchdev/*
-- Device Tree for various of_* functions
-
-MDIO/PHY library
-----------------
-
-Slave network devices exposed by DSA may or may not be interfacing with PHY
-devices (struct phy_device as defined in include/linux/phy.h), but the DSA
-subsystem deals with all possible combinations:
-
-- internal PHY devices, built into the Ethernet switch hardware
-- external PHY devices, connected via an internal or external MDIO bus
-- internal PHY devices, connected via an internal MDIO bus
-- special, non-autonegotiated or non MDIO-managed PHY devices: SFPs, MoCA; a.k.a
- fixed PHYs
-
-The PHY configuration is done by the dsa_slave_phy_setup() function and the
-logic basically looks like this:
-
-- if Device Tree is used, the PHY device is looked up using the standard
- "phy-handle" property, if found, this PHY device is created and registered
- using of_phy_connect()
-
-- if Device Tree is used, and the PHY device is "fixed", that is, conforms to
- the definition of a non-MDIO managed PHY as defined in
- Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/fixed-link.txt, the PHY is registered
- and connected transparently using the special fixed MDIO bus driver
-
-- finally, if the PHY is built into the switch, as is very common with
- standalone switch packages, the PHY is probed using the slave MII bus created
- by DSA
-
-
-SWITCHDEV
----------
-
-DSA directly utilizes SWITCHDEV when interfacing with the bridge layer, and
-more specifically with its VLAN filtering portion when configuring VLANs on top
-of per-port slave network devices. Since DSA primarily deals with
-MDIO-connected switches, although not exclusively, SWITCHDEV's
-prepare/abort/commit phases are often simplified into a prepare phase which
-checks whether the operation is supported by the DSA switch driver, and a commit
-phase which applies the changes.
-
-As of today, the only SWITCHDEV objects supported by DSA are the FDB and VLAN
-objects.
-
-Device Tree
------------
-
-DSA features a standardized binding which is documented in
-Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/dsa/dsa.txt. PHY/MDIO library helper
-functions such as of_get_phy_mode(), of_phy_connect() are also used to query
-per-port PHY specific details: interface connection, MDIO bus location etc..
-
-Driver development
-==================
-
-DSA switch drivers need to implement a dsa_switch_ops structure which will
-contain the various members described below.
-
-register_switch_driver() registers this dsa_switch_ops in its internal list
-of drivers to probe for. unregister_switch_driver() does the exact opposite.
-
-Unless requested differently by setting the priv_size member accordingly, DSA
-does not allocate any driver private context space.
-
-Switch configuration
---------------------
-
-- tag_protocol: this is to indicate what kind of tagging protocol is supported,
- should be a valid value from the dsa_tag_protocol enum
-
-- probe: probe routine which will be invoked by the DSA platform device upon
- registration to test for the presence/absence of a switch device. For MDIO
- devices, it is recommended to issue a read towards internal registers using
- the switch pseudo-PHY and return whether this is a supported device. For other
- buses, return a non-NULL string
-
-- setup: setup function for the switch, this function is responsible for setting
- up the dsa_switch_ops private structure with all it needs: register maps,
- interrupts, mutexes, locks etc.. This function is also expected to properly
- configure the switch to separate all network interfaces from each other, that
- is, they should be isolated by the switch hardware itself, typically by creating
- a Port-based VLAN ID for each port and allowing only the CPU port and the
- specific port to be in the forwarding vector. Ports that are unused by the
- platform should be disabled. Past this function, the switch is expected to be
- fully configured and ready to serve any kind of request. It is recommended
- to issue a software reset of the switch during this setup function in order to
- avoid relying on what a previous software agent such as a bootloader/firmware
- may have previously configured.
-
-PHY devices and link management
--------------------------------
-
-- get_phy_flags: Some switches are interfaced to various kinds of Ethernet PHYs,
- if the PHY library PHY driver needs to know about information it cannot obtain
- on its own (e.g.: coming from switch memory mapped registers), this function
- should return a 32-bits bitmask of "flags", that is private between the switch
- driver and the Ethernet PHY driver in drivers/net/phy/*.
-
-- phy_read: Function invoked by the DSA slave MDIO bus when attempting to read
- the switch port MDIO registers. If unavailable, return 0xffff for each read.
- For builtin switch Ethernet PHYs, this function should allow reading the link
- status, auto-negotiation results, link partner pages etc..
-
-- phy_write: Function invoked by the DSA slave MDIO bus when attempting to write
- to the switch port MDIO registers. If unavailable return a negative error
- code.
-
-- adjust_link: Function invoked by the PHY library when a slave network device
- is attached to a PHY device. This function is responsible for appropriately
- configuring the switch port link parameters: speed, duplex, pause based on
- what the phy_device is providing.
-
-- fixed_link_update: Function invoked by the PHY library, and specifically by
- the fixed PHY driver asking the switch driver for link parameters that could
- not be auto-negotiated, or obtained by reading the PHY registers through MDIO.
- This is particularly useful for specific kinds of hardware such as QSGMII,
- MoCA or other kinds of non-MDIO managed PHYs where out of band link
- information is obtained
-
-Ethtool operations
-------------------
-
-- get_strings: ethtool function used to query the driver's strings, will
- typically return statistics strings, private flags strings etc.
-
-- get_ethtool_stats: ethtool function used to query per-port statistics and
- return their values. DSA overlays slave network devices general statistics:
- RX/TX counters from the network device, with switch driver specific statistics
- per port
-
-- get_sset_count: ethtool function used to query the number of statistics items
-
-- get_wol: ethtool function used to obtain Wake-on-LAN settings per-port, this
- function may, for certain implementations also query the master network device
- Wake-on-LAN settings if this interface needs to participate in Wake-on-LAN
-
-- set_wol: ethtool function used to configure Wake-on-LAN settings per-port,
- direct counterpart to set_wol with similar restrictions
-
-- set_eee: ethtool function which is used to configure a switch port EEE (Green
- Ethernet) settings, can optionally invoke the PHY library to enable EEE at the
- PHY level if relevant. This function should enable EEE at the switch port MAC
- controller and data-processing logic
-
-- get_eee: ethtool function which is used to query a switch port EEE settings,
- this function should return the EEE state of the switch port MAC controller
- and data-processing logic as well as query the PHY for its currently configured
- EEE settings
-
-- get_eeprom_len: ethtool function returning for a given switch the EEPROM
- length/size in bytes
-
-- get_eeprom: ethtool function returning for a given switch the EEPROM contents
-
-- set_eeprom: ethtool function writing specified data to a given switch EEPROM
-
-- get_regs_len: ethtool function returning the register length for a given
- switch
-
-- get_regs: ethtool function returning the Ethernet switch internal register
- contents. This function might require user-land code in ethtool to
- pretty-print register values and registers
-
-Power management
-----------------
-
-- suspend: function invoked by the DSA platform device when the system goes to
- suspend, should quiesce all Ethernet switch activities, but keep ports
- participating in Wake-on-LAN active as well as additional wake-up logic if
- supported
-
-- resume: function invoked by the DSA platform device when the system resumes,
- should resume all Ethernet switch activities and re-configure the switch to be
- in a fully active state
-
-- port_enable: function invoked by the DSA slave network device ndo_open
- function when a port is administratively brought up, this function should be
- fully enabling a given switch port. DSA takes care of marking the port with
- BR_STATE_BLOCKING if the port is a bridge member, or BR_STATE_FORWARDING if it
- was not, and propagating these changes down to the hardware
-
-- port_disable: function invoked by the DSA slave network device ndo_close
- function when a port is administratively brought down, this function should be
- fully disabling a given switch port. DSA takes care of marking the port with
- BR_STATE_DISABLED and propagating changes to the hardware if this port is
- disabled while being a bridge member
-
-Bridge layer
-------------
-
-- port_bridge_join: bridge layer function invoked when a given switch port is
- added to a bridge, this function should be doing the necessary at the switch
- level to permit the joining port from being added to the relevant logical
- domain for it to ingress/egress traffic with other members of the bridge.
-
-- port_bridge_leave: bridge layer function invoked when a given switch port is
- removed from a bridge, this function should be doing the necessary at the
- switch level to deny the leaving port from ingress/egress traffic from the
- remaining bridge members. When the port leaves the bridge, it should be aged
- out at the switch hardware for the switch to (re) learn MAC addresses behind
- this port.
-
-- port_stp_state_set: bridge layer function invoked when a given switch port STP
- state is computed by the bridge layer and should be propagated to switch
- hardware to forward/block/learn traffic. The switch driver is responsible for
- computing a STP state change based on current and asked parameters and perform
- the relevant ageing based on the intersection results
-
-Bridge VLAN filtering
----------------------
-
-- port_vlan_filtering: bridge layer function invoked when the bridge gets
- configured for turning on or off VLAN filtering. If nothing specific needs to
- be done at the hardware level, this callback does not need to be implemented.
- When VLAN filtering is turned on, the hardware must be programmed with
- rejecting 802.1Q frames which have VLAN IDs outside of the programmed allowed
- VLAN ID map/rules. If there is no PVID programmed into the switch port,
- untagged frames must be rejected as well. When turned off the switch must
- accept any 802.1Q frames irrespective of their VLAN ID, and untagged frames are
- allowed.
-
-- port_vlan_prepare: bridge layer function invoked when the bridge prepares the
- configuration of a VLAN on the given port. If the operation is not supported
- by the hardware, this function should return -EOPNOTSUPP to inform the bridge
- code to fallback to a software implementation. No hardware setup must be done
- in this function. See port_vlan_add for this and details.
-
-- port_vlan_add: bridge layer function invoked when a VLAN is configured
- (tagged or untagged) for the given switch port
-
-- port_vlan_del: bridge layer function invoked when a VLAN is removed from the
- given switch port
-
-- port_vlan_dump: bridge layer function invoked with a switchdev callback
- function that the driver has to call for each VLAN the given port is a member
- of. A switchdev object is used to carry the VID and bridge flags.
-
-- port_fdb_add: bridge layer function invoked when the bridge wants to install a
- Forwarding Database entry, the switch hardware should be programmed with the
- specified address in the specified VLAN Id in the forwarding database
- associated with this VLAN ID. If the operation is not supported, this
- function should return -EOPNOTSUPP to inform the bridge code to fallback to
- a software implementation.
-
-Note: VLAN ID 0 corresponds to the port private database, which, in the context
-of DSA, would be the its port-based VLAN, used by the associated bridge device.
-
-- port_fdb_del: bridge layer function invoked when the bridge wants to remove a
- Forwarding Database entry, the switch hardware should be programmed to delete
- the specified MAC address from the specified VLAN ID if it was mapped into
- this port forwarding database
-
-- port_fdb_dump: bridge layer function invoked with a switchdev callback
- function that the driver has to call for each MAC address known to be behind
- the given port. A switchdev object is used to carry the VID and FDB info.
-
-- port_mdb_prepare: bridge layer function invoked when the bridge prepares the
- installation of a multicast database entry. If the operation is not supported,
- this function should return -EOPNOTSUPP to inform the bridge code to fallback
- to a software implementation. No hardware setup must be done in this function.
- See port_fdb_add for this and details.
-
-- port_mdb_add: bridge layer function invoked when the bridge wants to install
- a multicast database entry, the switch hardware should be programmed with the
- specified address in the specified VLAN ID in the forwarding database
- associated with this VLAN ID.
-
-Note: VLAN ID 0 corresponds to the port private database, which, in the context
-of DSA, would be the its port-based VLAN, used by the associated bridge device.
-
-- port_mdb_del: bridge layer function invoked when the bridge wants to remove a
- multicast database entry, the switch hardware should be programmed to delete
- the specified MAC address from the specified VLAN ID if it was mapped into
- this port forwarding database.
-
-- port_mdb_dump: bridge layer function invoked with a switchdev callback
- function that the driver has to call for each MAC address known to be behind
- the given port. A switchdev object is used to carry the VID and MDB info.
-
-TODO
-====
-
-Making SWITCHDEV and DSA converge towards an unified codebase
--------------------------------------------------------------
-
-SWITCHDEV properly takes care of abstracting the networking stack with offload
-capable hardware, but does not enforce a strict switch device driver model. On
-the other DSA enforces a fairly strict device driver model, and deals with most
-of the switch specific. At some point we should envision a merger between these
-two subsystems and get the best of both worlds.
-
-Other hanging fruits
---------------------
-
-- making the number of ports fully dynamic and not dependent on DSA_MAX_PORTS
-- allowing more than one CPU/management interface:
- http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.network/365657
-- porting more drivers from other vendors:
- http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.network/365510