* Thomas Graf <20041223194834.GF7884@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 2004-12-23 20:48
> The patch including the userspace tools can be found at
> http://people.suug.ch/~tgr/egp/. Be warned, this is totally unfinished
> work, some parts are not fully implemented yet it and still contains a lot
> of known issues. Nevertheless, I think it is time to publish it.
A few remarks on the yet to be addressed issues:
o The evaluation of values when reading one uses a recursive algorithm which
must be transformed. It's not difficult, just needs to be done.
o The design decision to transfer the complete configuration in a
single netlink message was wrong, it sets strong limits on the size
of configurations. Changing it to a architecture where keys/values can
be added/changed/remove brings some problems with locking and makes
validation difficult since the number of values/filters/keys must be
known when validating a key or value. A good solution would be to
temporarly disable a classifer while changing it and require the
first change request to submit all parameters required for validation.
o The fact that a value can represent a key result introduces a nasty
endless loop possibility. The key referenced by the value could
itself again reference the value or another key doing so. There is no
simple solution for this problem.
Some notes on performance:
EGP generally is a bit slower than classifiers such as u32 and fw
if used in the same way. This is easly explainable by the improved
complexity and the level of abstraction. However, one can reduce the
number of filters and required matches a lot which in the end gives
better performance results. OTOH, it might be real performance killer
if used in a wrong way.
My thoughts on inclusion and future of this:
o I think it's a rather bad idea to include this as of now, even if the
code itself is quite clean. Using the cls api is currently the only
way but it would definitely be better to replace the cls api with
something like this. EGP could be used as basis.
o I'll wait for some comments, given someone is actually interested in
it and decide what do afterwards. There is quite some stuff in the
queue postponed over and over such as netlink errors, move sched/
out of rtnetlink, metamatch, etc. If we're going to do the move outside
of rtnetlink we could at the same time do fundamental changes to the
API which would be required to take over some of egp's ideas. It
might be a step too far for some, but we can give it a few hair cuts
and shrink it down to what is really needed.
Cheers
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