Understanding Linux Network Internals

Protocol Handler Organization

Figure 13-7 shows how the different protocol handlers are organized in the kernel. Each protocol is described by a packet_type data structure.

Figure 13-7. Data structure used to store the registered protocol handlers

To make access faster, a very simple hash function is used for most of the protocols. Sixteen lists are organized into an array to which the global variable ptype_base points. When a protocol is registered, using the dev_add_pack function, described in the next section, this function runs a hash function over the protocol type and assigns the packet_type structure to one of the 16 lists. Later on, to find a packet_type structure, the kernel can simply rerun the hash and go through the matching list.

The ETH_P_ALL protocols (see Table 13-1) are organized in their own list to which the global variable ptype_all points.^[*] The number of protocols in this list is stored in netdev_nit. The latter is used by dev_queue_xmit and qdisc_restart to check whether a PF_PACKET socket is open (i.e., a listening sniffer) to which it can deliver a copy of ingress frames (see Chapter 10).

^[*] The figure shows that the ETH_P_ALL protocol types use the packet_rcv routine. func is initialized by packet_create in net/packet/af_packet.c based on the kernel configuration.