Create an in-kernel API for packet classes

(My open source project – Create an in-kernel API for packet classes – NetBSD) – Anish Babu Muppalaneni

Mentor: Herb Peyerl, NetBSD

Goal:

• To create an in-kernel API for “Packet Classes” and for labeling packets with their classes for special treatment by traffic shapers and Network Interface drivers.
• This API acts as a interface between software implementation of traffic categorizers like PF, IPFilter etc. and both the software and hardware implementation of traffic shapers like ALTQ,ath,rtw,Ethernet etc. In an ideal case, this API makes both traffic categorizer and traffic shaper fully interchangeable.
• Make PF use the packet-classes API to convert PF tag names—see pf.conf(5) for more about tags—to packet-class tokens, and to label mbufs with the tokens as they exit PF.
• Make ALTQ extract the packet-class tokens from mbufs and use them to select the packet-scheduling class.

Approach:

• A packet categorizer is a software program that categorizes or tags a packet being received or transmitted by kernel. For example, PF uses pf.conf(5) file for reading in rules and adds tags to packets based on those rulesets.ALTQ is a software traffic shaper which is integrated with PF. It allows PF to implement class based Queuing (CBQ) because it can read PF tags.
• But device driver queues have no idea of what each packet is because they don’t understand PF tags.
• Now, Packet class API plays. This API provides an interface to device drivers which register the classes that this driver can handle.
• During the registration part of the driver, a token is generated and this token is used by the traffic categorizer to add to m_bufs.
• As driver can understand this token now, it uses this tagged m_buf() in scheduling of the packet.

Current Status (June/22/2008)

1) Pseudo Device Driver:

Pseudo-device drivers are parts of the kernel that act like device drivers but do not correspond to any actual hardware in the machine. In order, for the userprogram to interact with kernel, I am writing a pseudo driver, which the user program reads the different packet classes or a driver writes its different classes to that device.

By default, NetBSD comes with various pseudo device drivers. I am citing some of Network related pseudo devices here, where as many others exist for disks, terminals etc..

pseudo-device looploop is the generic loopback device for TCP/IP. If you telnet or FTP to localhost (a.k.a. 127.0.0.1) it will come back at you through this pseudo-device.

pseudo-device etherether is only needed if you have an Ethernet card and includes generic Ethernet protocol code.

pseudo-device ppp numberppp is for kernel-mode PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) support for dial-up Internet connections. There is also version of PPP implemented as a user application that uses the tun and offers more flexibility and features such as demand dialing.

pseudo-device bpfilter number( Berkeley packet filter) . This pseudo-device allows network interfaces to be placed in promiscuous mode, capturing every packet on a broadcast network (e.g. an ethernet). These packets can be captured to disk and/or examined with the tcpdump(1) program. The number after bpfilter is the number of interfaces that can be examined simultaneously.

Anish Babu