Re: RFC: a loadable plugin framework for external capture backends

[Michael Richardson <mcr () sandelman ca>]

Robin Jarry <rjarry () redhat com> wrote:
    > First of all, I need to clarify one thing: DPDK is *not* an application. It
    > is a low-level collection of hardware drivers and libraries. And more
    > important: Applications using DPDK (OVS, VPP, grout, etc.) do *not* have the
    > same representation for what is an interface. DPDK only provides abstractions
    > for what is an Ethernet device.

Yes, thank you, I've trying to adapt my writing to more clearly say this.

    > Any attempt at making a *generic* capture API in DPDK libraries will only
    > work on physical ports. You will not be able to capture traffic on logical
    > interfaces (e.g. VLAN, VXLAN, IPIP, GRE, etc.) as these are logical
    > constructs that only make sense in the context of each application.

Point taken, so my notion of a technology agnostic IPC ring-buffer thing is
dead in the water :-)

    > What we are proposing is that libpcap does not care about any backend. It
    > would just expose an API contract for *out-of-tree* backends to implement.

I think we have converged on this at this point.

    > This proposal comes with a bonus: existing backends that are currently
    > built-in libpcap could use that same mechanism:

Agreed.

--
]               Never tell me the odds!                 | ipv6 mesh networks [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works        | network architect  [
]     mcr () sandelman ca  http://www.sandelman.ca/        |   ruby on rails    [

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