netkit: Add single device mode for netkit

Add a single device mode for netkit instead of netkit pairs. The primary
target for the paired devices is to connect network namespaces, of course,
and support has been implemented in projects like Cilium [0]. For the rxq
leasing the plan is to support two main scenarios related to single device
mode:

* For the use-case of io_uring zero-copy, the control plane can either
  set up a netkit pair where the peer device can perform rxq leasing which
  is then tied to the lifetime of the peer device, or the control plane
  can use a regular netkit pair to connect the hostns to a Pod/container
  and dynamically add/remove rxq leasing through a single device without
  having to interrupt the device pair. In the case of io_uring, the memory
  pool is used as skb non-linear pages, and thus the skb will go its way
  through the regular stack into netkit. Things like the netkit policy when
  no BPF is attached or skb scrubbing etc apply as-is in case the paired
  devices are used, or if the backend memory is tied to the single device
  and traffic goes through a paired device.

* For the use-case of AF_XDP, the control plane needs to use netkit in the
  single device mode. The single device mode currently enforces only a
  pass policy when no BPF is attached, and does not yet support BPF link
  attachments for AF_XDP. skbs sent to that device get dropped at the
  moment. Given AF_XDP operates at a lower layer of the stack tying this
  to the netkit pair did not make sense. In future, the plan is to allow
  BPF at the XDP layer which can: i) process traffic coming from the AF_XDP
  application (e.g. QEMU with AF_XDP backend) to filter egress traffic or
  to push selected egress traffic up to the single netkit device to the
  local stack (e.g. DHCP requests), and ii) vice-versa skbs sent to the
  single netkit into the AF_XDP application (e.g. DHCP replies). Also,
  the control-plane can dynamically manage rxq leasing for the single
  netkit device without having to interrupt (e.g. down/up cycle) the main
  netkit pair for the Pod which has traffic going in and out.

Signed-off-by: Daniel Borkmann <daniel@iogearbox.net>
Co-developed-by: David Wei <dw@davidwei.uk>
Signed-off-by: David Wei <dw@davidwei.uk>
Reviewed-by: Jordan Rife <jordan@jrife.io>
Reviewed-by: Nikolay Aleksandrov <razor@blackwall.org>
Link: https://docs.cilium.io/en/stable/operations/performance/tuning/#netkit-device-mode [0]
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260115082603.219152-10-daniel@iogearbox.net
Signed-off-by: Paolo Abeni <pabeni@redhat.com>
This commit is contained in:
Daniel Borkmann
2026-01-15 09:25:56 +01:00
committed by Andrii Nakryiko
parent a623828cdc
commit 05121e3fd9

View File

@@ -1296,6 +1296,11 @@ enum netkit_mode {
NETKIT_L3,
};
enum netkit_pairing {
NETKIT_DEVICE_PAIR,
NETKIT_DEVICE_SINGLE,
};
/* NETKIT_SCRUB_NONE leaves clearing skb->{mark,priority} up to
* the BPF program if attached. This also means the latter can
* consume the two fields if they were populated earlier.
@@ -1320,6 +1325,7 @@ enum {
IFLA_NETKIT_PEER_SCRUB,
IFLA_NETKIT_HEADROOM,
IFLA_NETKIT_TAILROOM,
IFLA_NETKIT_PAIRING,
__IFLA_NETKIT_MAX,
};
#define IFLA_NETKIT_MAX (__IFLA_NETKIT_MAX - 1)