Imagine buying off the shelf switch hardware, install Fedora (or any other
distribution) and configure it using standard linux tools. This is not
possible at the moment primarily because of lack of unified and consistent
platforms and driver interfaces. We are working to change that.
The current state of support for switch chips in Linux is not good. Each
vendor provides userspace binary sdk blob that only works with their
chips. Each of this blobs has proprietary APIs. To get switch chips
properly supported there's need to introduce a new infrastructure directly
into Linux kernel and to work with vendors to adopt it.
This talk presents the current effort to unify and uphold the Linux
networking model across the spectrum of devices which is necessary to make
Linux the cornerstone of industrial grade networking. The scope of this
talk covers state of art with current implementation of standard commodity
switches such as top of rack switches, small home gateway device as well
as SR-IOV NIC embedded switches.
A device model and driver infrastructure will be presented for
accelerating the Linux bridge, Linux router, accelerated host virtual
switches and flow level offloads when supported by the hardware
underneath.