Re: [RFC PATCH 15/16] gtp: add ability to send GTP controls headers

[Pravin Shelar <pravin.ovn@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 9:24 PM Jonas Bonn <jonas@norrbonn.se> wrote:
>
> Hi Jakub,
>
> On 01/02/2021 21:44, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> > On Sat, 30 Jan 2021 12:05:40 -0800 Pravin Shelar wrote:
> >> On Sat, Jan 30, 2021 at 10:44 AM Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org> wrote:
> >>> On Fri, 29 Jan 2021 22:59:06 -0800 Pravin Shelar wrote:
> >>>> On Fri, Jan 29, 2021 at 6:08 AM Jonas Bonn <jonas@norrbonn.se> wrote:
> >>>> Following are the reasons for extracting the header and populating metadata.
> >>>> 1. That is the design used by other tunneling protocols
> >>>> implementations for handling optional headers. We need to have a
> >>>> consistent model across all tunnel devices for upper layers.
> >>>
> >>> Could you clarify with some examples? This does not match intuition,
> >>> I must be missing something.
> >>
> >> You can look at geneve_rx() or vxlan_rcv() that extracts optional
> >> headers in ip_tunnel_info opts.
> >
> > Okay, I got confused what Jonas was inquiring about. I thought that the
> > extension headers were not pulled, rather than not parsed. Copying them
> > as-is to info->opts is right, thanks!
> >
>
> No, you're not confused.  The extension headers are not being pulled in
> the current patchset.
>
> Incoming packet:
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> | flags | type | len | TEID | N-PDU | SEQ | Ext | EXT.Hdr | IP | ...
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> <--------- GTP header ------<<Optional GTP elements>>-----><- Pkt --->
>
> The "collect metadata" path of the patchset copies 'flags' and 'type' to
> info->opts, but leaves the following:
>
> -----------------------------------------
> | N-PDU | SEQ | Ext | EXT.Hdr | IP | ...
> -----------------------------------------
> <--------- GTP header -------><- Pkt --->
>
> So it's leaving _half_ the header and making it a requirement that there
> be further intelligence down the line that can handle this.  This is far
> from intuitive.
>

The patch supports Echo, Echo response and End marker packet.
Issue with pulling the entire extension header is that it would result
in zero length skb, such packets can not be passed on to the upper
layer. That is the reason I kept the extension header in skb and added
indication in tunnel metadata that it is not a IP packet. so that
upper layer can process the packet.
IP packet without an extension header would be handled in a fast path
without any special handling.

Obviously In case of PDU session container extension header GTP driver
would need to process the entire extension header in the module. This
way we can handle these user data packets in fastpath.
I can make changes to use the same method for all extension headers if needed.