Re: [RFC net-next] net: dsa: add support for MC_DISABLED attribute

[Nikolay Aleksandrov <nikolay@cumulusnetworks.com>]

On 30/06/2019 19:56, Linus Lüssing wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 29, 2019 at 07:29:45PM +0300, Ido Schimmel wrote:
>> I would like to avoid having drivers take the querier state into account
>> as it will only complicate things further.
> 
> I absolutely share your pain. Initially in the early prototypes of
> multicast awareness in batman-adv we did not consider the querier state.
> And doing so later did indeed complicate the code a good bit in batman-adv
> (together with the IGMP/MLD suppression issues). I would have loved to
> avoid that.
> 
> 
>> Is there anything we can do about it? Enable the bridge querier if no
>> other querier was detected? Commit c5c23260594c ("bridge: Add
>> multicast_querier toggle and disable queries by default") disabled
>> queries by default, but I'm only suggesting to turn them on if no other
>> querier was detected on the link. Do you think it's still a problem?
> 
> As soon as you start becoming the querier, you will not be able to reliably
> detect anymore whether you are the only querier candidate.
> 
> If any random Linux host using a bridge device were potentially becoming
> a querier, that would cause quite some trouble when this host is
> behind some bad, bottleneck connection. This host will receive
> all multicast traffic, not just IGMP/MLD reports. And with a
> congested connection and then unreliable IGMP/MLD, multicast would
> become unreliable overall in this domain. So it's important that
> your querier is not running in the "dark, remote, dusty closet" of
> your network (topologically speaking).
> 

+1
We definitely don't want random hosts becoming queriers

>> On Sun, Jun 23, 2019 at 10:44:27AM +0300, Ido Schimmel wrote:
>>> See commit b00589af3b04 ("bridge: disable snooping if there is no
>>> querier"). I think that's unfortunate behavior that we need because
>>> multicast snooping is enabled by default. If it weren't enabled by
>>> default, then anyone enabling it would also make sure there's a querier
>>> in the network.
> 
> I do not quite understand that point. In a way, that's what we
> have right now, isn't it? By default it's disabled, because by
> default there is no querier on the link. So anyone wanting to use
> multicast snooping will need to make sure there's a querier in the
> network.
> 

Indeed, also you could create the bridge with explicit mcast parameters if you need
different behaviour on start. Unfortunately I think you'll have to handle
the querier state.

> 
> Overall I think the querier (election) mechanism in the standards could
> need an update. While the lowest-address first might have
> worked well back then, in uniform, fully wired networks where the
> position of the querier did not matter, this is not a good
> solution anymore in networks involving wireless, dynamic connections.
> Especially in wireless mesh networks this is a bit of an issue for
> us. Ideally, the querier mechanism were dismissed in favour of simply
> unsolicited, periodic IGMP/MLD reports...
> 
> But of course, updating IETF standards is no solution for now. 
> 
> While more complicated, it would not be impossible to consider the
> querier state, would it? I mean you probably already need to
> consider the case of a user disabling multicast snooping during
> runtime, right? So similarly, you could react to appearing or
> disappearing queriers?
> 
> Cheers, Linus
> 

Thanks,
 Nik