Re: Interested in {Create an in-kernel API for "packet classes"}

["Ermal Luçi" <ermal.luci%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 9:09 PM, David Young <dyoung%pobox.com@localhost> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 06:12:48PM +0200, Ermal Lu?i wrote:
>  > On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 8:35 AM, Darren Reed 
> <darrenr%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:
>  > > Indradip Ghosh wrote:
>  > >
>  > > > Hello Mentors,
>  > > > This is Indradip, a Grad student at University of Texas at Arlington.
>  > > >  I am interested to work on the project {Create an in-kernel API for
>  > > > "packet classes"} .
>  > > > My proposal is as follows:
>  > > >
>  > > >
>  > >  ...
>  > >
>  > >  See my comments to Anish's idea...and to summarise...
>  > >
>  > >  To validate the project accomplishing a packet class API that is
>  > > independant
>  > >  of pf, it needs to be used by another consumer - ipfilter is a good
>  > > candidate -
>  > >  to prove that you've got the API right and not just a divided API for 
> pf.
>  >
>  > One thing that i struggle with. Does this mean that you need to modify
>  > all the drivers to tag/label their packets?!
>  >
>  > Or does it mean resurrecting old ALTQ classifier to have a generic way
>  > of doing this and extend it to handle 802.11 or other classes?!
>
>  A packet filter is the label producer: PF or IP Filter will classify
>  packets and apply labels.  ALTQ and the network interfaces (PPP,
>  ethernets, et cetera) are label consumers: they examine the labels, which
>  help them to decide which traffic category/queue to place the packets in.
>
>  Note that ALTQ may be both a consumer and a producer of labels, since
>  it both classifies and queues.

Oh i thought it as applying some default labels that could be matched
in firewalls/filterers/classifiers. Like wireless drivers labeling
their standard priorities and you could match those on the
filterer/classifier or extracting by default 802.1p classes as labels.

So this is the case of unifying the tagging/labeling way across the kernel.
As a note, i really would like if it could be done as pf does it with
strings since it is more natural to be configured. Furthermore, it is
ready and just needs to be extracted from pf and applied to anything
else consuming tags.
The only problem is optimizing the tags zone to have some fast
matching on strings.

Ermal

>
>  Dave
>
>  --
>  David Young             OJC Technologies
>  dyoung%ojctech.com@localhost      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933 ext 24
>