Re: multiple rx/tx rings and interrupt delivery on newer nics

[Darren Reed <darrenr%netbsd.org@localhost>]

Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 05:47:38PM +0100, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
>> We'd need a generic way to add priority tags to packets, and then
>> use it in NIC drivers.
> 
> But most modern NICs can use multiple receive rings based on much
> richer (and more useful) criteria than just priority.  And, generally
> speaking, you never want anything in the system to touch all packets --
> you want them segregated to a receive ring based on, for example,
> source and destination address and port, and you never want anything
> that's not on CPU N to touch receive ring N.

Right.

Hardware classification on server NICs now supports using the
complete 5-tuple (srcip, dstip, protocol, srcport, dstport) as
part of deciding which rx ring to place a packet in.

Darren