Re: [PATCH net-next v2 4/4] net: wwan: Add Qualcomm BAM-DMUX WWAN network driver

From: Loic Poulain <loic.poulain@linaro.org>
To: Stephan Gerhold <stephan@gerhold.net>
Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>,
	Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>,
	Sergey Ryazanov <ryazanov.s.a@gmail.com>,
	Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>,
	Bjorn Andersson <bjorn.andersson@linaro.org>,
	Andy Gross <agross@kernel.org>, Vinod Koul <vkoul@kernel.org>,
	Rob Herring <robh+dt@kernel.org>,
	Aleksander Morgado <aleksander@aleksander.es>,
	Network Development <netdev@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-arm-msm <linux-arm-msm@vger.kernel.org>,
	dmaengine@vger.kernel.org,
	devicetree <devicetree@vger.kernel.org>,
	open list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	phone-devel@vger.kernel.org,
	~postmarketos/upstreaming@lists.sr.ht,
	Jeffrey Hugo <jeffrey.l.hugo@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next v2 4/4] net: wwan: Add Qualcomm BAM-DMUX WWAN network driver
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2021 09:55:48 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAMZdPi8G5wtcAxTYfzwdJVMauEx+5wk7eqP9VX9QaVqrzsZkEw@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <YWRPXnzh+NLVqHvo@gerhold.net>

Hi Stephan,

On Mon, 11 Oct 2021 at 16:51, Stephan Gerhold <stephan@gerhold.net> wrote:
> > Like in the RFC version [1], the driver does not currently use the link
> > management of the WWAN subsystem. Instead, it simply exposes one network
> > interface for each of the up to 8 channels.
> >
> > This setup works out of the box with all available open-source userspace
> > WWAN implementations, especially ModemManager (no changes needed).
> > oFono works too although it requires minor changes to support WWAN control
> > ports (/dev/wwan0qmi0) which are independent of BAM-DMUX (already provided
> > by the "rpmsg_wwan_ctrl" driver).
> > It was easy to support because the setup is very similar to ones already
> > supported for USB modems. Some of them provide multiple network interfaces
> > and ModemManager can bundle them together to a single modem.
> >
> > I believe it is best to keep this setup as-is for now and not add even
> > more complexity to userspace with another setup that works only in this
> > particular configuration. I will reply to this patch separately to explain
> > that a bit more clearly. This patch is already long enough as-is. :)
> >
> > [1]: https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/20210719145317.79692-5-stephan@gerhold.net/
> >
>
> The main goal of the WWAN link management is to make the multiplexing
> setup transparent to userspace. Unfortunately it's still unclear to me
> how or even if this can be achieved for the many different different
> setups that exist for Qualcomm modems. To show that more clearly I'll
> "briefly" list the various currently supported setups in ModemManager
> (there might be even more that I am not even aware of).

The goal is also to have a common hierarchy, with the network link
being a child of the WWAN device, as for the control ports. Making it
easier for the user side to find the relation between all these
devices. Moreover, it allows having a common set of attributes, like
the LINK ID, and possibly new ones in the future. I mean it's probably
fine if you create a static set of network devices and do not support
dynamic link creation, but I think they should be created in some way
via the WWAN subsystem, and get the same attributes (link id), we can
have special meaning link ids (-1) for e.g. non context specific
netdevs (e.g. for rmnet/qmap transport iface).

Regards,
Loic