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Diffstat (limited to 'doc/guides/nics/i40e.rst')
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diff --git a/doc/guides/nics/i40e.rst b/doc/guides/nics/i40e.rst index 934eb027..da695afd 100644 --- a/doc/guides/nics/i40e.rst +++ b/doc/guides/nics/i40e.rst @@ -366,3 +366,48 @@ Delete all flow director rules on a port: testpmd> flush_flow_director 0 +Floating VEB +~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + +The Intel® Ethernet Controller X710 and XL710 Family support a feature called +"Floating VEB". + +A Virtual Ethernet Bridge (VEB) is an IEEE Edge Virtual Bridging (EVB) term +for functionality that allows local switching between virtual endpoints within +a physical endpoint and also with an external bridge/network. + +A "Floating" VEB doesn't have an uplink connection to the outside world so all +switching is done internally and remains within the host. As such, this +feature provides security benefits. + +In addition, a Floating VEB overcomes a limitation of normal VEBs where they +cannot forward packets when the physical link is down. Floating VEBs don't need +to connect to the NIC port so they can still forward traffic from VF to VF +even when the physical link is down. + +Therefore, with this feature enabled VFs can be limited to communicating with +each other but not an outside network, and they can do so even when there is +no physical uplink on the associated NIC port. + +To enable this feature, the user should pass a ``devargs`` parameter to the +EAL, for example:: + + -w 84:00.0,enable_floating_veb=1 + +In this configuration the PMD will use the floating VEB feature for all the +VFs created by this PF device. + +Alternatively, the user can specify which VFs need to connect to this floating +VEB using the ``floating_veb_list`` argument:: + + -w 84:00.0,enable_floating_veb=1,floating_veb_list=1;3-4 + +In this example ``VF1``, ``VF3`` and ``VF4`` connect to the floating VEB, +while other VFs connect to the normal VEB. + +The current implementation only supports one floating VEB and one regular +VEB. VFs can connect to a floating VEB or a regular VEB according to the +configuration passed on the EAL command line. + +The floating VEB functionality requires a NIC firmware version of 5.0 +or greater. |