Linux Ethernet Bridging - May 2022 - [Bridge] [PATCH V3 net-next 1/4] net: bridge: add fdb flag to extent locked port feature

On tor, maj 26, 2022 at 17:13, Ido Schimmel <idosch at idosch.org>
wrote:
> On Tue, May 24, 2022 at 05:21:41PM +0200, Hans Schultz wrote:
>> Add an intermediate state for clients behind a locked port to allow for
>> possible opening of the port for said clients. This feature corresponds
>> to the Mac-Auth and MAC Authentication Bypass (MAB) named features. The
>> latter defined by Cisco.
>> Locked FDB entries will be limited in number, so as to prevent DOS
>> attacks by spamming the port with random entries. The limit will be
>> a per port limit as it is a port based feature and that the port
flushes
>> all FDB entries on link down.
>
> Why locked FDB entries need a special treatment compared to regular
> entries? A port that has learning enabled can be spammed with random
> source MACs just as well.
>
> The authorization daemon that is monitoring FDB notifications can have a
> policy to shut down a port if the rate / number of locked entries is
> above a given threshold.
>
> I don't think this kind of policy belongs in the kernel. If it resides
> in user space, then the threshold can be adjusted. Currently it's hard
> coded to 64 and I don't see how user space can change or monitor it.
In the Mac-Auth/MAB context, the locked port feature is really a form of
CPU based learning, and on mv88e6xxx switchcores, this is facilitated by
violation interrupts. Based on miss violation interrupts, the locked
entries are then added to a list with a timer to remove the entries
according to the bridge timeout.
As this is very CPU intensive compared to normal operation, the
assessment is that all this will jam up most devices if bombarded with
random entries at link speed, and my estimate is that any userspace 
daemon that listens to the ensuing fdb events will never get a chance
to stop this flood and eventually the device will lock down/reset. To
prevent this, the limit is introduced.

Ideally this limit could be adjustable from userspace, but in real
use-cases a cap like 64 should be more than enough, as that corresponds
to 64 possible devices behind a port that cannot authenticate by other
means (printers etc.) than having their mac addresses white-listed.

The software bridge behavior was then just set to correspond to the
offloaded behavior, but after correspondence with Nik, the software
bridge locked entries limit will be removed.

On Fri, May 27, 2022 at 10:52:27AM +0200, Hans Schultz
wrote:
> On tor, maj 26, 2022 at 17:13, Ido Schimmel <idosch at idosch.org>
wrote:
> > On Tue, May 24, 2022 at 05:21:41PM +0200, Hans Schultz wrote:
> >> Add an intermediate state for clients behind a locked port to
allow for
> >> possible opening of the port for said clients. This feature
corresponds
> >> to the Mac-Auth and MAC Authentication Bypass (MAB) named
features. The
> >> latter defined by Cisco.
> >> Locked FDB entries will be limited in number, so as to prevent DOS
> >> attacks by spamming the port with random entries. The limit will
be
> >> a per port limit as it is a port based feature and that the port
flushes
> >> all FDB entries on link down.
> >
> > Why locked FDB entries need a special treatment compared to regular
> > entries? A port that has learning enabled can be spammed with random
> > source MACs just as well.
> >
> > The authorization daemon that is monitoring FDB notifications can have
a
> > policy to shut down a port if the rate / number of locked entries is
> > above a given threshold.
> >
> > I don't think this kind of policy belongs in the kernel. If it
resides
> > in user space, then the threshold can be adjusted. Currently it's
hard
> > coded to 64 and I don't see how user space can change or monitor
it.
> 
> In the Mac-Auth/MAB context, the locked port feature is really a form of
> CPU based learning, and on mv88e6xxx switchcores, this is facilitated by
> violation interrupts. Based on miss violation interrupts, the locked
> entries are then added to a list with a timer to remove the entries
> according to the bridge timeout.
> As this is very CPU intensive compared to normal operation, the
> assessment is that all this will jam up most devices if bombarded with
> random entries at link speed, and my estimate is that any userspace 
> daemon that listens to the ensuing fdb events will never get a chance
> to stop this flood and eventually the device will lock down/reset. To
> prevent this, the limit is introduced.
> 
> Ideally this limit could be adjustable from userspace, but in real
> use-cases a cap like 64 should be more than enough, as that corresponds
> to 64 possible devices behind a port that cannot authenticate by other
> means (printers etc.) than having their mac addresses white-listed.
> 
> The software bridge behavior was then just set to correspond to the
> offloaded behavior, but after correspondence with Nik, the software
> bridge locked entries limit will be removed.
As far as the bridge is concerned, locked entries are not really
different from regular learned entries in terms of processing and since
we don't have limits for regular entries I don't think we should have
limits for locked entries.

I do understand the problem you have in mv88e6xxx and I think it would
be wise to hard code a reasonable limit there. It can be adjusted over
time based on feedback and possibly exposed to user space.

Just to give you another data point about how this works in other
devices, I can say that at least in Spectrum this works a bit
differently. Packets that ingress via a locked port and incur an FDB
miss are trapped to the CPU where they should be injected into the Rx
path so that the bridge will create the 'locked' FDB entry and notify it
to user space. The packets are obviously rated limited as the CPU cannot
handle billions of packets per second, unlike the ASIC. The limit is not
per bridge port (or even per bridge), but instead global to the entire
device.