On Sun, Jun 25, 2023 at 9:59 AM Bin Meng <bm...@tinylab.org> wrote: > > The minimum Ethernet frame length is 60 bytes. For short frames with > smaller length like ARP packets (only 42 bytes), on a real world NIC > it can choose either padding its length to the minimum required 60 > bytes, or sending it out directly to the wire. Such behavior can be > hardcoded or controled by a register bit. Similarly on the receive > path, NICs can choose either dropping such short frames directly or > handing them over to software to handle. > > On the other hand, for the network backends like SLiRP/TAP, they > don't expose a way to control the short frame behavior. As of today > they just send/receive data from/to the other end connected to them, > which means any sized packet is acceptable. So they can send and > receive short frames without any problem. It is observed that ARP > packets sent from SLiRP/TAP are 42 bytes, and SLiRP/TAP just send > these ARP packets to the other end which might be a NIC model that > does not allow short frames to pass through. > > To provide better compatibility, for packets sent from QEMU network > backends like SLiRP/TAP, we change to pad short frames before sending > it out to the other end, if the other end does not forbid it via the > nc->do_not_pad flag. This ensures a backend as an Ethernet sender > does not violate the spec. But with this change, the behavior of > dropping short frames from SLiRP/TAP interfaces in the NIC model > cannot be emulated because it always receives a packet that is spec > complaint. The capability of sending short frames from NIC models is > still supported and short frames can still pass through SLiRP/TAP. > > This series should be able to fix the issue as reported with some > NIC models before, that ARP requests get dropped, preventing the > guest from becoming visible on the network. It was workarounded in > these NIC models on the receive path, that when a short frame is > received, it is padded up to 60 bytes. > > Only the first 4 patches of the v5 series [1] were applied in QEMU 6.0, > and the reset was said to be queued for 6.1 but for some reason they > never landed in QEMU mainline. > > Hopefully this series will make it for QEMU 8.1. > > [1] > https://lore.kernel.org/qemu-devel/859cd26a-feb2-ed62-98d5-764841a46...@redhat.com/ > > Changes in v7: > - new patch: "hw/net: ftgmac100: Drop the small packet check in the receive > path" >
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