Merge branch 'nexthop-preparations-for-resilient-next-hop-groups'

Petr Machata says:

====================
nexthop: Preparations for resilient next-hop groups

At this moment, there is only one type of next-hop group: an mpath group.
Mpath groups implement the hash-threshold algorithm, described in RFC
2992[1].

To select a next hop, hash-threshold algorithm first assigns a range of
hashes to each next hop in the group, and then selects the next hop by
comparing the SKB hash with the individual ranges. When a next hop is
removed from the group, the ranges are recomputed, which leads to
reassignment of parts of hash space from one next hop to another. RFC 2992
illustrates it thus:

             +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
             |   1   |   2   |   3   |   4   |   5   |
             +-------+-+-----+---+---+-----+-+-------+
             |    1    |    2    |    4    |    5    |
             +---------+---------+---------+---------+

              Before and after deletion of next hop 3
	      under the hash-threshold algorithm.

Note how next hop 2 gave up part of the hash space in favor of next hop 1,
and 4 in favor of 5. While there will usually be some overlap between the
previous and the new distribution, some traffic flows change the next hop
that they resolve to.

If a multipath group is used for load-balancing between multiple servers,
this hash space reassignment causes an issue that packets from a single
flow suddenly end up arriving at a server that does not expect them, which
may lead to TCP reset.

If a multipath group is used for load-balancing among available paths to
the same server, the issue is that different latencies and reordering along
the way causes the packets to arrive in wrong order.

Resilient hashing is a technique to address the above problem. Resilient
next-hop group has another layer of indirection between the group itself
and its constituent next hops: a hash table. The selection algorithm uses a
straightforward modulo operation to choose a hash bucket, and then reads
the next hop that this bucket contains, and forwards traffic there.

This indirection brings an important feature. In the hash-threshold
algorithm, the range of hashes associated with a next hop must be
continuous. With a hash table, mapping between the hash table buckets and
the individual next hops is arbitrary. Therefore when a next hop is deleted
the buckets that held it are simply reassigned to other next hops:

             +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
             |1|1|1|1|2|2|2|2|3|3|3|3|4|4|4|4|5|5|5|5|
             +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
	                      v v v v
             +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
             |1|1|1|1|2|2|2|2|1|2|4|5|4|4|4|4|5|5|5|5|
             +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

              Before and after deletion of next hop 3
	      under the resilient hashing algorithm.

When weights of next hops in a group are altered, it may be possible to
choose a subset of buckets that are currently not used for forwarding
traffic, and use those to satisfy the new next-hop distribution demands,
keeping the "busy" buckets intact. This way, established flows are ideally
kept being forwarded to the same endpoints through the same paths as before
the next-hop group change.

This patchset prepares the next-hop code for eventual introduction of
resilient hashing groups.

- Patches #1-#4 carry otherwise disjoint changes that just remove certain
  assumptions in the next-hop code.

- Patches #5-#6 extend the in-kernel next-hop notifiers to support more
  next-hop group types.

- Patches #7-#12 refactor RTNL message handlers. Resilient next-hop groups
  will introduce a new logical object, a hash table bucket. It turns out
  that handling bucket-related messages is similar to how next-hop messages
  are handled. These patches extract the commonalities into reusable
  components.

The plan is to contribute approximately the following patchsets:

1) Nexthop policy refactoring (already pushed)
2) Preparations for resilient next hop groups (this patchset)
3) Implementation of resilient next hop group
4) Netdevsim offload plus a suite of selftests
5) Preparations for mlxsw offload of resilient next-hop groups
6) mlxsw offload including selftests

Interested parties can look at the current state of the code at [2] and
[3].

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2992
[2] https://github.com/idosch/linux/commits/submit/res_integ_v1
[3] https://github.com/idosch/iproute2/commits/submit/res_v1
====================

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/cover.1611836479.git.petrm@nvidia.com
Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>