This driver relies on Linux rdma-core (libibverb) userspace poll-mode driver to rx/tx Ethernet packets. Despite using the RDMA APIs, this is not about RDMA (no Infiniband, no RoCE, no iWARP), just pure traditional Ethernet packets.

Maturity level

Under development: it should work, but has not been thoroughly tested.

Supported Hardware

Mellanox ConnectX-4
Mellanox ConnectX-5

Features

bifurcation: MAC based flow steering for transparent sharing of a single physical port between multiple virtual interfaces including Linux netdev
multiqueue

Security considerations

When creating a rdma interface, it will receive all packets to the MAC address attributed to the interface plus a copy of all broadcast and multicast traffic. The MAC address is under the control of VPP: the user controlling VPP can divert all traffic of any MAC address to the VPP process, including the Linux netdev MAC address as long as it can create a rdma interface. The rights to create a rdma interface are controlled by the access rights of the /dev/infiniband/uverbs[0-9]+device nodes.

Quickstart

Make sure the ib_uverbs module is loaded:
1 ~# modprobe ib_uverbs
In VPP, create a new rdma virtual interface tied to the Linux netdev of the physical port you want to use (enp94s0f0 in this example):
1 vpp# create int rdma host-if enp94s0f0 name rdma-0
Use the interface as usual, eg.: ``` vpp# set int ip addr rdma-0 1.1.1.1/24 vpp# set int st rdma-0 up vpp# ping 1.1.1.100 ``

Containers support

It should work in containers as long as:

the ib_uverbs module is loaded
the device nodes /dev/infiniband/uverbs[0-9]+ are usable from the container (but see security considerations)