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On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 09:23:56AM -0700, Joseph Mack NA3T wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Mar 2008, Julius Volz wrote:
>
>> Hi LVS devs,
>>
>> I'm currently interning at Google Zurich and we are very interested in
>> porting IPVS to IPv6. Indeed, I will probably dedicate 60-70% of my
>> time to that cause for the next 5 months to come.
>
> wonderful. Thanks
>
>> 1) It looks as though there is no current effort on the way to do this
>> port, right?
>
> correct.
There was a very old effort that you can find if you search a bit -
I can dig up a link if you can't find it. But as far as I am aware
there are no efforts at this time.
>> 2) Are there any serious technical or political roadblocks to this we
>> are not seeing?
>
> There is an effort underway to move ipvs() from the LOCAL_IN chain, where
> it currently sits for historical reasons, to a better place. A better
> place is either PREROUTING or FORWARD. Both hooks look OK at the moment.
> It is possible that the location will be decided at run time. This work
> is being done by Janusz, who is on this mailing list, but AFAIK it's not
> in the kernel and hasn't had testing by selected users. You should
> coordinate with him so that your codes are compatible.
>
> There is a problem with PMTU discovery when using LVS-Tun (described in
> the HOWTO), which is currently handled (I think) by iptables and an mss
> option. Part of the problem is that the Linux networking stack doesn't do
> PMTU correctly.
> At least be prepared for this problem. I don't know how easy it would be
> to fix.
>
> We don't have enough people using UDP to know how LVS should handle UDP.
> There are problems with UDP (described in the HOWTO). People are trying
> to setup SIP on LVS. With all the ports involved in the protocol, I don't
> expect it will be easy. I expect the only solution will be a module on
> the director (like the ftp helper) that understands the SIP protocol. It
> seems that multiport protocols are going to become more common as coders
> try to get through ISPs who think it's their business to throttle the
> internet.
>
> ipvs has an uneasy relationship with netfilter. ipvs bypasses netfilter
> for speed. However in doing so, iptables no longer works as users would
> reasonably expect (at least for LVS-NAT). With cpus getting faster,
> relative to networks (I think that's true), it may not hurt if ipvs is a
> little slower, for more compatibility with netfilter. However the speed
> of ipvs is a well regarded feature. *BSD has loadbalancing but it's slow
> compared to ipvs, so we wouldn't want to drop too much speed.
[ Joe, I'm not sure that the LOCAL_IN stuff is really related
specifically to IPv6. But you do remind me that those patches
need to be revisited. ]
About six months ago I spoke very briefly with Dave Miller (who is
ultimately who is going to decide if the code goes in or not) and he had
no objections.
>> 3) Currently, IPVS lives under .../net/ipv4/ipvs in the kernel, but
>> much of the code is not IPv4-specific.
>
> I expect this is all historical, from when ipvs was based on
> masquerading code, rather than netfilter.
>
>> Any ideas on how to best refactor that common code to make it usable
>> for both IPv4 or IPv6?
>
> If you write it and are happy with it, we'll take your scheme :-). Horms
> has been doing all the work on LVS for the last couple of years, knows
> the code and has thought a lot about where LVS should and shouldn't go.
> I'm sure he'll have ideas on what's best.
Yes, I expect so to. It would be good to open up a discussion
with Dave Miller and the other netdev people about any refactoring
that you think is needed. They should be able to advise on what
should go where.
>> 4) How could this work be best split up into manageable chunks that
>> could either be worked on serially or in parallel (by multiple
>> developers)?
>
> There hasn't been much developement on ipvs recently. The original
> developer Wensong hasn't been active for a while and Horms took over.
> Horms is the one who submits the new code to the kernel. But Horms has
> been busy doing other things and in the meantime ipvs is not getting a
> lot of attention. So you'll be it if you take on the ipv6 job.
>
>> 5) Who else would be interested in parts of this effort or just in
>> helping out when questions come up?
>
> Anyone on this list will be happy to listen to anything you have to say
> :-)
IPv6 is something that has been needed for a long time. I'm quite
interested in it myself. But to date haven't had any luck finding
time to work on it. I'm happy to help out with your effort. Though
I imagine that for the most part it will be in the form of reviewing
patches.
>> So I've been looking at the code for a couple of days now and some
>> parts I understand well, others I don't get at all, but I hope to
>> change that soon ;)
>
> good luck. Thanks for taking on the job.
To be honest, sometimes when I look at the code I get surprises too.
But if you have any questions please just send them my way, CC usually
gets my attention.
--
Horms
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