On Fri, 10 Aug 2012 11:34:32 +0800
"Peter Huang(Peng)" <peter.huangp...@huawei.com> wrote:

I searched from git-log, and found that until now we have vhost TX zero-copy 
experiment feature, how
about RX zero-copy?

On 08/11/2012 04:55 PM, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
There is no guarantee that packet will ever be read by receiver. This means 
zero-copy could
create memory back pressure stalls.

It would be handy if this could be an optional feature, perhaps not enabled by default due to the problem with stalls you mentioned. I would love to see RX zero-copy implemented natively in KVM, as it might alleviate the need for custom solutions like vPF_RING:

http://www.ntop.org/products/pf_ring/vpf_ring/

Every time a packet is copied, especially from kernel space to user space, there is an opportunity for it to be dropped on its way to the receiving application - which is unacceptable when monitoring high-speed networks for security or bandwidth accounting purposes.

I am attempting to find a highly-efficient way to deploy virtualized network monitoring sensors (Snort, for example). Ideally I want to exploit symmetric hardware-based RSS and SR-IOV functionality for load-balancing and packet distribution completely in ASIC. I've found other existing work in this area (also using custom drivers) indicating significant performance gains in the non-virtualized case:

http://www.ndsl.kaist.edu/~shinae/papers/TR-symRSS.pdf

Is there any interest in exploring native RX zero-copy within the mainline KVM networking code?

Thanks,
Robert Vineyard
_______________________________________________
Virtualization mailing list
Virtualization@lists.linux-foundation.org
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/virtualization

Reply via email to