openvswitch: Add support for unique flow IDs.
Previously, flows were manipulated by userspace specifying a full, unmasked flow key. This adds significant burden onto flow serialization/deserialization, particularly when dumping flows. This patch adds an alternative way to refer to flows using a variable-length "unique flow identifier" (UFID). At flow setup time, userspace may specify a UFID for a flow, which is stored with the flow and inserted into a separate table for lookup, in addition to the standard flow table. Flows created using a UFID must be fetched or deleted using the UFID. All flow dump operations may now be made more terse with OVS_UFID_F_* flags. For example, the OVS_UFID_F_OMIT_KEY flag allows responses to omit the flow key from a datapath operation if the flow has a corresponding UFID. This significantly reduces the time spent assembling and transacting netlink messages. With all OVS_UFID_F_OMIT_* flags enabled, the datapath only returns the UFID and statistics for each flow during flow dump, increasing ovs-vswitchd revalidator performance by 40% or more. Signed-off-by: Joe Stringer <joestringer@nicira.com> Acked-by: Pravin B Shelar <pshelar@nicira.com> Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Please register or sign in to comment