Merge branch 'master' into for-next

Fast-forward merge with Linus to be able to merge patches
based on more recent version of the tree.

4 files changed, 525 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/networking/00-INDEX b/Documentation/networking/00-INDEX
index 4edd78dfb362..bbce1215434a 100644
--- a/Documentation/networking/00-INDEX
+++ b/Documentation/networking/00-INDEX
@@ -1,13 +1,21 @@
 00-INDEX
 	- this file
+3c359.txt
+	- information on the 3Com TokenLink Velocity XL (3c5359) driver.
 3c505.txt
 	- information on the 3Com EtherLink Plus (3c505) driver.
+3c509.txt
+	- information on the 3Com Etherlink III Series Ethernet cards.
 6pack.txt
 	- info on the 6pack protocol, an alternative to KISS for AX.25
 DLINK.txt
 	- info on the D-Link DE-600/DE-620 parallel port pocket adapters
 PLIP.txt
 	- PLIP: The Parallel Line Internet Protocol device driver
+README.ipw2100
+	- README for the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 driver.
+README.ipw2200
+	- README for the Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG and 2200BG driver.
 README.sb1000
 	- info on General Instrument/NextLevel SURFboard1000 cable modem.
 alias.txt
@@ -20,8 +28,12 @@ atm.txt
 	- info on where to get ATM programs and support for Linux.
 ax25.txt
 	- info on using AX.25 and NET/ROM code for Linux
+batman-adv.txt
+	- B.A.T.M.A.N routing protocol on top of layer 2 Ethernet Frames.
 baycom.txt
 	- info on the driver for Baycom style amateur radio modems
+bonding.txt
+	- Linux Ethernet Bonding Driver HOWTO: link aggregation in Linux.
 bridge.txt
 	- where to get user space programs for ethernet bridging with Linux.
 can.txt
@@ -34,32 +46,60 @@ cxacru.txt
 	- Conexant AccessRunner USB ADSL Modem
 cxacru-cf.py
 	- Conexant AccessRunner USB ADSL Modem configuration file parser
+cxgb.txt
+	- Release Notes for the Chelsio N210 Linux device driver.
+dccp.txt
+	- the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) (RFC 4340..42).
 de4x5.txt
 	- the Digital EtherWORKS DE4?? and DE5?? PCI Ethernet driver
 decnet.txt
 	- info on using the DECnet networking layer in Linux.
 depca.txt
 	- the Digital DEPCA/EtherWORKS DE1?? and DE2?? LANCE Ethernet driver
+dl2k.txt
+	- README for D-Link DL2000-based Gigabit Ethernet Adapters (dl2k.ko).
+dm9000.txt
+	- README for the Simtec DM9000 Network driver.
 dmfe.txt
 	- info on the Davicom DM9102(A)/DM9132/DM9801 fast ethernet driver.
+dns_resolver.txt
+	- The DNS resolver module allows kernel servies to make DNS queries.
+driver.txt
+	- Softnet driver issues.
 e100.txt
 	- info on Intel's EtherExpress PRO/100 line of 10/100 boards
 e1000.txt
 	- info on Intel's E1000 line of gigabit ethernet boards
+e1000e.txt
+	- README for the Intel Gigabit Ethernet Driver (e1000e).
 eql.txt
 	- serial IP load balancing
 ewrk3.txt
 	- the Digital EtherWORKS 3 DE203/4/5 Ethernet driver
+fib_trie.txt
+	- Level Compressed Trie (LC-trie) notes: a structure for routing.
 filter.txt
 	- Linux Socket Filtering
 fore200e.txt
 	- FORE Systems PCA-200E/SBA-200E ATM NIC driver info.
 framerelay.txt
 	- info on using Frame Relay/Data Link Connection Identifier (DLCI).
+gen_stats.txt
+	- Generic networking statistics for netlink users.
+generic_hdlc.txt
+	- The generic High Level Data Link Control (HDLC) layer.
 generic_netlink.txt
 	- info on Generic Netlink
+gianfar.txt
+	- Gianfar Ethernet Driver.
 ieee802154.txt
 	- Linux IEEE 802.15.4 implementation, API and drivers
+ifenslave.c
+	- Configure network interfaces for parallel routing (bonding).
+igb.txt
+	- README for the Intel Gigabit Ethernet Driver (igb).
+igbvf.txt
+	- README for the Intel Gigabit Ethernet Driver (igbvf).
 ip-sysctl.txt
 	- /proc/sys/net/ipv4/* variables
 ip_dynaddr.txt
@@ -68,41 +108,117 @@ ipddp.txt
 	- AppleTalk-IP Decapsulation and AppleTalk-IP Encapsulation
 iphase.txt
 	- Interphase PCI ATM (i)Chip IA Linux driver info.
+ipv6.txt
+	- Options to the ipv6 kernel module.
+ipvs-sysctl.txt
+	- Per-inode explanation of the /proc/sys/net/ipv4/vs interface.
 irda.txt
 	- where to get IrDA (infrared) utilities and info for Linux.
+ixgb.txt
+	- README for the Intel 10 Gigabit Ethernet Driver (ixgb).
+ixgbe.txt
+	- README for the Intel 10 Gigabit Ethernet Driver (ixgbe).
+ixgbevf.txt
+	- README for the Intel Virtual Function (VF) Driver (ixgbevf).
+l2tp.txt
+	- User guide to the L2TP tunnel protocol.
 lapb-module.txt
 	- programming information of the LAPB module.
 ltpc.txt
 	- the Apple or Farallon LocalTalk PC card driver
+mac80211-injection.txt
+	- HOWTO use packet injection with mac80211
 multicast.txt
 	- Behaviour of cards under Multicast
+multiqueue.txt
+	- HOWTO for multiqueue network device support.
+netconsole.txt
+	- The network console module netconsole.ko: configuration and notes.
+netdev-features.txt
+	- Network interface features API description.
 netdevices.txt
 	- info on network device driver functions exported to the kernel.
+netif-msg.txt
+	- Design of the network interface message level setting (NETIF_MSG_*).
+nfc.txt
+	- The Linux Near Field Communication (NFS) subsystem.
 olympic.txt
 	- IBM PCI Pit/Pit-Phy/Olympic Token Ring driver info.
+operstates.txt
+	- Overview of network interface operational states.
+packet_mmap.txt
+	- User guide to memory mapped packet socket rings (PACKET_[RT]X_RING).
+phonet.txt
+	- The Phonet packet protocol used in Nokia cellular modems.
+phy.txt
+	- The PHY abstraction layer.
+pktgen.txt
+	- User guide to the kernel packet generator (pktgen.ko).
 policy-routing.txt
 	- IP policy-based routing
+ppp_generic.txt
+	- Information about the generic PPP driver.
+proc_net_tcp.txt
+	- Per inode overview of the /proc/net/tcp and /proc/net/tcp6 interfaces.
+radiotap-headers.txt
+	- Background on radiotap headers.
 ray_cs.txt
 	- Raylink Wireless LAN card driver info.
+rds.txt
+	- Background on the reliable, ordered datagram delivery method RDS.
+regulatory.txt
+	- Overview of the Linux wireless regulatory infrastructure.
+rxrpc.txt
+	- Guide to the RxRPC protocol.
+s2io.txt
+	- Release notes for Neterion Xframe I/II 10GbE driver.
+scaling.txt
+	- Explanation of network scaling techniques: RSS, RPS, RFS, aRFS, XPS.
+sctp.txt
+	- Notes on the Linux kernel implementation of the SCTP protocol.
+secid.txt
+	- Explanation of the secid member in flow structures.
 skfp.txt
 	- SysKonnect FDDI (SK-5xxx, Compaq Netelligent) driver info.
 smc9.txt
 	- the driver for SMC's 9000 series of Ethernet cards
 smctr.txt
 	- SMC TokenCard TokenRing Linux driver info.
+spider-net.txt
+	- README for the Spidernet Driver (as found in PS3 / Cell BE).
+stmmac.txt
+	- README for the STMicro Synopsys Ethernet driver.
+tc-actions-env-rules.txt
+	- rules for traffic control (tc) actions.
+timestamping.txt
+	- overview of network packet timestamping variants.
 tcp.txt
 	- short blurb on how TCP output takes place.
+tcp-thin.txt
+	- kernel tuning options for low rate 'thin' TCP streams.
 tlan.txt
 	- ThunderLAN (Compaq Netelligent 10/100, Olicom OC-2xxx) driver info.
 tms380tr.txt
 	- SysKonnect Token Ring ISA/PCI adapter driver info.
+tproxy.txt
+	- Transparent proxy support user guide.
 tuntap.txt
 	- TUN/TAP device driver, allowing user space Rx/Tx of packets.
+udplite.txt
+	- UDP-Lite protocol (RFC 3828) introduction.
 vortex.txt
 	- info on using 3Com Vortex (3c590, 3c592, 3c595, 3c597) Ethernet cards.
+vxge.txt
+	- README for the Neterion X3100 PCIe Server Adapter.
 x25.txt
 	- general info on X.25 development.
 x25-iface.txt
 	- description of the X.25 Packet Layer to LAPB device interface.
+xfrm_proc.txt
+	- description of the statistics package for XFRM.
+xfrm_sync.txt
+	- sync patches for XFRM enable migration of an SA between hosts.
+xfrm_sysctl.txt
+	- description of the XFRM configuration options.
 z8530drv.txt
 	- info about Linux driver for Z8530 based HDLC cards for AX.25
diff --git a/Documentation/networking/bonding.txt b/Documentation/networking/bonding.txt
index 675612ff41ae..91df678fb7f8 100644
--- a/Documentation/networking/bonding.txt
+++ b/Documentation/networking/bonding.txt
@@ -238,6 +238,18 @@ ad_select
 
 	This option was added in bonding version 3.4.0.
 
+all_slaves_active
+
+	Specifies that duplicate frames (received on inactive ports) should be
+	dropped (0) or delivered (1).
+
+	Normally, bonding will drop duplicate frames (received on inactive
+	ports), which is desirable for most users. But there are some times
+	it is nice to allow duplicate frames to be delivered.
+
+	The default value is 0 (drop duplicate frames received on inactive
+	ports).
+
 arp_interval
 
 	Specifies the ARP link monitoring frequency in milliseconds.
@@ -433,6 +445,23 @@ miimon
 	determined.  See the High Availability section for additional
 	information.  The default value is 0.
 
+min_links
+
+	Specifies the minimum number of links that must be active before
+	asserting carrier. It is similar to the Cisco EtherChannel min-links
+	feature. This allows setting the minimum number of member ports that
+	must be up (link-up state) before marking the bond device as up
+	(carrier on). This is useful for situations where higher level services
+	such as clustering want to ensure a minimum number of low bandwidth
+	links are active before switchover. This option only affect 802.3ad
+	mode.
+
+	The default value is 0. This will cause carrier to be asserted (for
+	802.3ad mode) whenever there is an active aggregator, regardless of the
+	number of available links in that aggregator. Note that, because an
+	aggregator cannot be active without at least one available link,
+	setting this option to 0 or to 1 has the exact same effect.
+
 mode
 
 	Specifies one of the bonding policies. The default is
@@ -599,7 +628,7 @@ num_unsol_na
 	affect only the active-backup mode.  These options were added for
 	bonding versions 3.3.0 and 3.4.0 respectively.
 
-	From Linux 2.6.40 and bonding version 3.7.1, these notifications
+	From Linux 3.0 and bonding version 3.7.1, these notifications
 	are generated by the ipv4 and ipv6 code and the numbers of
 	repetitions cannot be set independently.
 
diff --git a/Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.txt b/Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.txt
index db2a4067013c..81546990f41c 100644
--- a/Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.txt
+++ b/Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.txt
@@ -992,7 +992,7 @@ bindv6only - BOOLEAN
 		TRUE: disable IPv4-mapped address feature
 		FALSE: enable IPv4-mapped address feature
 
-	Default: FALSE (as specified in RFC2553bis)
+	Default: FALSE (as specified in RFC3493)
 
 IPv6 Fragmentation:
 
diff --git a/Documentation/networking/scaling.txt b/Documentation/networking/scaling.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..58fd7414e6c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/networking/scaling.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,378 @@
+Scaling in the Linux Networking Stack
+
+
+Introduction
+============
+
+This document describes a set of complementary techniques in the Linux
+networking stack to increase parallelism and improve performance for
+multi-processor systems.
+
+The following technologies are described:
+
+  RSS: Receive Side Scaling
+  RPS: Receive Packet Steering
+  RFS: Receive Flow Steering
+  Accelerated Receive Flow Steering
+  XPS: Transmit Packet Steering
+
+
+RSS: Receive Side Scaling
+=========================
+
+Contemporary NICs support multiple receive and transmit descriptor queues
+(multi-queue). On reception, a NIC can send different packets to different
+queues to distribute processing among CPUs. The NIC distributes packets by
+applying a filter to each packet that assigns it to one of a small number
+of logical flows. Packets for each flow are steered to a separate receive
+queue, which in turn can be processed by separate CPUs. This mechanism is
+generally known as “Receive-side Scaling” (RSS). The goal of RSS and
+the other scaling techniques to increase performance uniformly.
+Multi-queue distribution can also be used for traffic prioritization, but
+that is not the focus of these techniques.
+
+The filter used in RSS is typically a hash function over the network
+and/or transport layer headers-- for example, a 4-tuple hash over
+IP addresses and TCP ports of a packet. The most common hardware
+implementation of RSS uses a 128-entry indirection table where each entry
+stores a queue number. The receive queue for a packet is determined
+by masking out the low order seven bits of the computed hash for the
+packet (usually a Toeplitz hash), taking this number as a key into the
+indirection table and reading the corresponding value.
+
+Some advanced NICs allow steering packets to queues based on
+programmable filters. For example, webserver bound TCP port 80 packets
+can be directed to their own receive queue. Such “n-tuple” filters can
+be configured from ethtool (--config-ntuple).
+
+==== RSS Configuration
+
+The driver for a multi-queue capable NIC typically provides a kernel
+module parameter for specifying the number of hardware queues to
+configure. In the bnx2x driver, for instance, this parameter is called
+num_queues. A typical RSS configuration would be to have one receive queue
+for each CPU if the device supports enough queues, or otherwise at least
+one for each memory domain, where a memory domain is a set of CPUs that
+share a particular memory level (L1, L2, NUMA node, etc.).
+
+The indirection table of an RSS device, which resolves a queue by masked
+hash, is usually programmed by the driver at initialization. The
+default mapping is to distribute the queues evenly in the table, but the
+indirection table can be retrieved and modified at runtime using ethtool
+commands (--show-rxfh-indir and --set-rxfh-indir). Modifying the
+indirection table could be done to give different queues different
+relative weights.
+
+== RSS IRQ Configuration
+
+Each receive queue has a separate IRQ associated with it. The NIC triggers
+this to notify a CPU when new packets arrive on the given queue. The
+signaling path for PCIe devices uses message signaled interrupts (MSI-X),
+that can route each interrupt to a particular CPU. The active mapping
+of queues to IRQs can be determined from /proc/interrupts. By default,
+an IRQ may be handled on any CPU. Because a non-negligible part of packet
+processing takes place in receive interrupt handling, it is advantageous
+to spread receive interrupts between CPUs. To manually adjust the IRQ
+affinity of each interrupt see Documentation/IRQ-affinity. Some systems
+will be running irqbalance, a daemon that dynamically optimizes IRQ
+assignments and as a result may override any manual settings.
+
+== Suggested Configuration
+
+RSS should be enabled when latency is a concern or whenever receive
+interrupt processing forms a bottleneck. Spreading load between CPUs
+decreases queue length. For low latency networking, the optimal setting
+is to allocate as many queues as there are CPUs in the system (or the
+NIC maximum, if lower). The most efficient high-rate configuration
+is likely the one with the smallest number of receive queues where no
+receive queue overflows due to a saturated CPU, because in default
+mode with interrupt coalescing enabled, the aggregate number of
+interrupts (and thus work) grows with each additional queue.
+
+Per-cpu load can be observed using the mpstat utility, but note that on
+processors with hyperthreading (HT), each hyperthread is represented as
+a separate CPU. For interrupt handling, HT has shown no benefit in
+initial tests, so limit the number of queues to the number of CPU cores
+in the system.
+
+
+RPS: Receive Packet Steering
+============================
+
+Receive Packet Steering (RPS) is logically a software implementation of
+RSS. Being in software, it is necessarily called later in the datapath.
+Whereas RSS selects the queue and hence CPU that will run the hardware
+interrupt handler, RPS selects the CPU to perform protocol processing
+above the interrupt handler. This is accomplished by placing the packet
+on the desired CPU’s backlog queue and waking up the CPU for processing.
+RPS has some advantages over RSS: 1) it can be used with any NIC,
+2) software filters can easily be added to hash over new protocols,
+3) it does not increase hardware device interrupt rate (although it does
+introduce inter-processor interrupts (IPIs)).
+
+RPS is called during bottom half of the receive interrupt handler, when
+a driver sends a packet up the network stack with netif_rx() or
+netif_receive_skb(). These call the get_rps_cpu() function, which
+selects the queue that should process a packet.
+
+The first step in determining the target CPU for RPS is to calculate a
+flow hash over the packet’s addresses or ports (2-tuple or 4-tuple hash
+depending on the protocol). This serves as a consistent hash of the
+associated flow of the packet. The hash is either provided by hardware
+or will be computed in the stack. Capable hardware can pass the hash in
+the receive descriptor for the packet; this would usually be the same
+hash used for RSS (e.g. computed Toeplitz hash). The hash is saved in
+skb->rx_hash and can be used elsewhere in the stack as a hash of the
+packet’s flow.
+
+Each receive hardware queue has an associated list of CPUs to which
+RPS may enqueue packets for processing. For each received packet,
+an index into the list is computed from the flow hash modulo the size
+of the list. The indexed CPU is the target for processing the packet,
+and the packet is queued to the tail of that CPU’s backlog queue. At
+the end of the bottom half routine, IPIs are sent to any CPUs for which
+packets have been queued to their backlog queue. The IPI wakes backlog
+processing on the remote CPU, and any queued packets are then processed
+up the networking stack.
+
+==== RPS Configuration
+
+RPS requires a kernel compiled with the CONFIG_RPS kconfig symbol (on
+by default for SMP). Even when compiled in, RPS remains disabled until
+explicitly configured. The list of CPUs to which RPS may forward traffic
+can be configured for each receive queue using a sysfs file entry:
+
+ /sys/class/net/<dev>/queues/rx-<n>/rps_cpus
+
+This file implements a bitmap of CPUs. RPS is disabled when it is zero
+(the default), in which case packets are processed on the interrupting
+CPU. Documentation/IRQ-affinity.txt explains how CPUs are assigned to
+the bitmap.
+
+== Suggested Configuration
+
+For a single queue device, a typical RPS configuration would be to set
+the rps_cpus to the CPUs in the same memory domain of the interrupting
+CPU. If NUMA locality is not an issue, this could also be all CPUs in
+the system. At high interrupt rate, it might be wise to exclude the
+interrupting CPU from the map since that already performs much work.
+
+For a multi-queue system, if RSS is configured so that a hardware
+receive queue is mapped to each CPU, then RPS is probably redundant
+and unnecessary. If there are fewer hardware queues than CPUs, then
+RPS might be beneficial if the rps_cpus for each queue are the ones that
+share the same memory domain as the interrupting CPU for that queue.
+
+
+RFS: Receive Flow Steering
+==========================
+
+While RPS steers packets solely based on hash, and thus generally
+provides good load distribution, it does not take into account
+application locality. This is accomplished by Receive Flow Steering
+(RFS). The goal of RFS is to increase datacache hitrate by steering
+kernel processing of packets to the CPU where the application thread
+consuming the packet is running. RFS relies on the same RPS mechanisms
+to enqueue packets onto the backlog of another CPU and to wake up that
+CPU.
+
+In RFS, packets are not forwarded directly by the value of their hash,
+but the hash is used as index into a flow lookup table. This table maps
+flows to the CPUs where those flows are being processed. The flow hash
+(see RPS section above) is used to calculate the index into this table.
+The CPU recorded in each entry is the one which last processed the flow.
+If an entry does not hold a valid CPU, then packets mapped to that entry
+are steered using plain RPS. Multiple table entries may point to the
+same CPU. Indeed, with many flows and few CPUs, it is very likely that
+a single application thread handles flows with many different flow hashes.
+
+rps_sock_table is a global flow table that contains the *desired* CPU for
+flows: the CPU that is currently processing the flow in userspace. Each
+table value is a CPU index that is updated during calls to recvmsg and
+sendmsg (specifically, inet_recvmsg(), inet_sendmsg(), inet_sendpage()
+and tcp_splice_read()).
+
+When the scheduler moves a thread to a new CPU while it has outstanding
+receive packets on the old CPU, packets may arrive out of order. To
+avoid this, RFS uses a second flow table to track outstanding packets
+for each flow: rps_dev_flow_table is a table specific to each hardware
+receive queue of each device. Each table value stores a CPU index and a
+counter. The CPU index represents the *current* CPU onto which packets
+for this flow are enqueued for further kernel processing. Ideally, kernel
+and userspace processing occur on the same CPU, and hence the CPU index
+in both tables is identical. This is likely false if the scheduler has
+recently migrated a userspace thread while the kernel still has packets
+enqueued for kernel processing on the old CPU.
+
+The counter in rps_dev_flow_table values records the length of the current
+CPU's backlog when a packet in this flow was last enqueued. Each backlog
+queue has a head counter that is incremented on dequeue. A tail counter
+is computed as head counter + queue length. In other words, the counter
+in rps_dev_flow_table[i] records the last element in flow i that has
+been enqueued onto the currently designated CPU for flow i (of course,
+entry i is actually selected by hash and multiple flows may hash to the
+same entry i).
+
+And now the trick for avoiding out of order packets: when selecting the
+CPU for packet processing (from get_rps_cpu()) the rps_sock_flow table
+and the rps_dev_flow table of the queue that the packet was received on
+are compared. If the desired CPU for the flow (found in the
+rps_sock_flow table) matches the current CPU (found in the rps_dev_flow
+table), the packet is enqueued onto that CPU’s backlog. If they differ,
+the current CPU is updated to match the desired CPU if one of the
+following is true:
+
+- The current CPU's queue head counter >= the recorded tail counter
+  value in rps_dev_flow[i]
+- The current CPU is unset (equal to NR_CPUS)
+- The current CPU is offline
+
+After this check, the packet is sent to the (possibly updated) current
+CPU. These rules aim to ensure that a flow only moves to a new CPU when
+there are no packets outstanding on the old CPU, as the outstanding
+packets could arrive later than those about to be processed on the new
+CPU.
+
+==== RFS Configuration
+
+RFS is only available if the kconfig symbol CONFIG_RFS is enabled (on
+by default for SMP). The functionality remains disabled until explicitly
+configured. The number of entries in the global flow table is set through:
+
+ /proc/sys/net/core/rps_sock_flow_entries
+
+The number of entries in the per-queue flow table are set through:
+
+ /sys/class/net/<dev>/queues/tx-<n>/rps_flow_cnt
+
+== Suggested Configuration
+
+Both of these need to be set before RFS is enabled for a receive queue.
+Values for both are rounded up to the nearest power of two. The
+suggested flow count depends on the expected number of active connections
+at any given time, which may be significantly less than the number of open
+connections. We have found that a value of 32768 for rps_sock_flow_entries
+works fairly well on a moderately loaded server.
+
+For a single queue device, the rps_flow_cnt value for the single queue
+would normally be configured to the same value as rps_sock_flow_entries.
+For a multi-queue device, the rps_flow_cnt for each queue might be
+configured as rps_sock_flow_entries / N, where N is the number of
+queues. So for instance, if rps_flow_entries is set to 32768 and there
+are 16 configured receive queues, rps_flow_cnt for each queue might be
+configured as 2048.
+
+
+Accelerated RFS
+===============
+
+Accelerated RFS is to RFS what RSS is to RPS: a hardware-accelerated load
+balancing mechanism that uses soft state to steer flows based on where
+the application thread consuming the packets of each flow is running.
+Accelerated RFS should perform better than RFS since packets are sent
+directly to a CPU local to the thread consuming the data. The target CPU
+will either be the same CPU where the application runs, or at least a CPU
+which is local to the application thread’s CPU in the cache hierarchy.
+
+To enable accelerated RFS, the networking stack calls the
+ndo_rx_flow_steer driver function to communicate the desired hardware
+queue for packets matching a particular flow. The network stack
+automatically calls this function every time a flow entry in
+rps_dev_flow_table is updated. The driver in turn uses a device specific
+method to program the NIC to steer the packets.
+
+The hardware queue for a flow is derived from the CPU recorded in
+rps_dev_flow_table. The stack consults a CPU to hardware queue map which
+is maintained by the NIC driver. This is an auto-generated reverse map of
+the IRQ affinity table shown by /proc/interrupts. Drivers can use
+functions in the cpu_rmap (“CPU affinity reverse map”) kernel library
+to populate the map. For each CPU, the corresponding queue in the map is
+set to be one whose processing CPU is closest in cache locality.
+
+==== Accelerated RFS Configuration
+
+Accelerated RFS is only available if the kernel is compiled with
+CONFIG_RFS_ACCEL and support is provided by the NIC device and driver.
+It also requires that ntuple filtering is enabled via ethtool. The map
+of CPU to queues is automatically deduced from the IRQ affinities
+configured for each receive queue by the driver, so no additional
+configuration should be necessary.
+
+== Suggested Configuration
+
+This technique should be enabled whenever one wants to use RFS and the
+NIC supports hardware acceleration.
+
+XPS: Transmit Packet Steering
+=============================
+
+Transmit Packet Steering is a mechanism for intelligently selecting
+which transmit queue to use when transmitting a packet on a multi-queue
+device. To accomplish this, a mapping from CPU to hardware queue(s) is
+recorded. The goal of this mapping is usually to assign queues
+exclusively to a subset of CPUs, where the transmit completions for
+these queues are processed on a CPU within this set. This choice
+provides two benefits. First, contention on the device queue lock is
+significantly reduced since fewer CPUs contend for the same queue
+(contention can be eliminated completely if each CPU has its own
+transmit queue). Secondly, cache miss rate on transmit completion is
+reduced, in particular for data cache lines that hold the sk_buff
+structures.
+
+XPS is configured per transmit queue by setting a bitmap of CPUs that
+may use that queue to transmit. The reverse mapping, from CPUs to
+transmit queues, is computed and maintained for each network device.
+When transmitting the first packet in a flow, the function
+get_xps_queue() is called to select a queue. This function uses the ID
+of the running CPU as a key into the CPU-to-queue lookup table. If the
+ID matches a single queue, that is used for transmission. If multiple
+queues match, one is selected by using the flow hash to compute an index
+into the set.
+
+The queue chosen for transmitting a particular flow is saved in the
+corresponding socket structure for the flow (e.g. a TCP connection).
+This transmit queue is used for subsequent packets sent on the flow to
+prevent out of order (ooo) packets. The choice also amortizes the cost
+of calling get_xps_queues() over all packets in the flow. To avoid
+ooo packets, the queue for a flow can subsequently only be changed if
+skb->ooo_okay is set for a packet in the flow. This flag indicates that
+there are no outstanding packets in the flow, so the transmit queue can
+change without the risk of generating out of order packets. The
+transport layer is responsible for setting ooo_okay appropriately. TCP,
+for instance, sets the flag when all data for a connection has been
+acknowledged.
+
+==== XPS Configuration
+
+XPS is only available if the kconfig symbol CONFIG_XPS is enabled (on by
+default for SMP). The functionality remains disabled until explicitly
+configured. To enable XPS, the bitmap of CPUs that may use a transmit
+queue is configured using the sysfs file entry:
+
+/sys/class/net/<dev>/queues/tx-<n>/xps_cpus
+
+== Suggested Configuration
+
+For a network device with a single transmission queue, XPS configuration
+has no effect, since there is no choice in this case. In a multi-queue
+system, XPS is preferably configured so that each CPU maps onto one queue.
+If there are as many queues as there are CPUs in the system, then each
+queue can also map onto one CPU, resulting in exclusive pairings that
+experience no contention. If there are fewer queues than CPUs, then the
+best CPUs to share a given queue are probably those that share the cache
+with the CPU that processes transmit completions for that queue
+(transmit interrupts).
+
+
+Further Information
+===================
+RPS and RFS were introduced in kernel 2.6.35. XPS was incorporated into
+2.6.38. Original patches were submitted by Tom Herbert
+(therbert@google.com)
+
+Accelerated RFS was introduced in 2.6.35. Original patches were
+submitted by Ben Hutchings (bhutchings@solarflare.com)
+
+Authors:
+Tom Herbert (therbert@google.com)
+Willem de Bruijn (willemb@google.com)