[Bridge] [PATCH net-next] net: bridge: add support for per-port vlan stats

[Nikolay Aleksandrov]

On October 12, 2018 6:39:32 PM GMT+03:00, Stephen Hemminger <stephen at networkplumber.org> wrote:
>On Fri, 12 Oct 2018 13:41:16 +0300
>Nikolay Aleksandrov <nikolay at cumulusnetworks.com> wrote:
>
>> This patch adds an option to have per-port vlan stats instead of the
>> default global stats. The option can be set only when there are no
>port
>> vlans in the bridge since we need to allocate the stats if it is set
>> when vlans are being added to ports (and respectively free them
>> when being deleted). Also bump RTNL_MAX_TYPE as the bridge is the
>> largest user of options. The current stats design allows us to add
>> these without any changes to the fast-path, it all comes down to
>> the per-vlan stats pointer which, if this option is enabled, will
>> be allocated for each port vlan instead of using the global
>bridge-wide
>> one.
>> 
>> CC: bridge at lists.linux-foundation.org
>> CC: Roopa Prabhu <roopa at cumulusnetworks.com>
>> Signed-off-by: Nikolay Aleksandrov <nikolay at cumulusnetworks.com>
>
>Yes, per-vlan stats could be quite useful.
>Most cases of statistics in the kernel are always on, and some API's
>get them (and skip others).  Other than the additional memory overhead,
>why
>not make the statistics as always on.
>

The additional overhead can be quite a lot and it also affects performance, besides that currently users expect the same accumulated stats.

>Also, is there any chance of creating too much data in a netlink
>message if there are 4K-1 VLAN's?

No, that's okay because we expose the stats via the xstats API which
continues the dump on filling the current buffer.
We can export as much info as needed.

Cheers,
  Nik