linux/net
Jordan Rife 509ca545d4 bpf: Support BPF_F_EGRESS with bpf_redirect_peer
We have several use cases where a pod injects traffic into the datapath
of another so that the traffic appears to have originated from that
pod. One such use case is a synthetic flow generator which injects
synthetic traffic into a pod's datapath to enable dynamic probing and
debugging. Another is a transparent proxy where connections originating
from one pod are redirected towards another which proxies that
connection. The new connection is bound to the IP of the original pod
using IP_TRANSPARENT and its traffic is injected into that pod's
datapath and handled as if it had originated there. This can be used for
mTLS, etc.

We use bpf_redirect(BPF_F_INGRESS) to direct traffic leaving the proxy,
flow generator, etc. towards the target pod, ensuring that eBPF programs
that are meant to intercept traffic leaving that pod are executed.
However, this doesn't work with netkit.

With netkit, an ingress redirection from proxy to workload skips eBPF
programs that are meant to intercept traffic leaving the pod, since they
reside on the netkit peer device. One workaround is to attach the
same program to both the netkit peer device and the TCX ingress hook for
the netkit pair's primary interface, but

a) This seems hacky and we need to be careful not to run the same
   program twice for the same skb in cases where we want to pass that
   traffic to the host stack.
b) We're trying to keep the proxy redirection / traffic injection
   systems as modular and separated from Cilium as possible, the system
   that manages netkit setup and core eBPF programming.

It would be handy if instead we could redirect traffic directly from
one netkit peer device to another. This patch proposes an extension
to bpf_redirect_peer to allow us to do just that.

With this patch, the BPF_F_EGRESS flag tells bpf_redirect_peer to emit
the skb in the egress direction of the target interface's peer device
While the main use case is netkit, I suppose you could also use this
mode with veth as well if, e.g., there were some eBPF programs attached
to that side of the veth pair that needed to intercept traffic.

 +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
 | +-------------------------+         6. bpf_redirect_neigh(eth0)     |
 | | pod (10.244.0.10)       |           ------------------------      |
 | |                         |          |                        |     |
 | |              +--------+ |          |      +---------+       |     |
 | | 1. packet -->|        | |          |      |         |       |     |
 | |    leaves ^  | netkit |<===========|======| netkit  |       |     |
 | |           |  | peer   |=======(eBPF)=====>| primary |       |     |
 | |           |  |        | |          |      |         |       |     |
 | |           |  +--------+ |          |      +---------+       |     |
 | |           |             |          | 2. bpf_redirect        v     |
 | +-----------|-------------+          |___________________   +-------|
 |             |                                            |  | eth0  |
 |             | 5. bpf_redirect_peer(BPF_F_EGRESS)         |  +-------|
 |             |________________________                    |          |
 | +-------------------------+          |                   |          |
 | | proxy (10.244.0.11)     |          |                   |          |
 | | IP_TRANSPARENT          |          |                   |          |
 | |              +--------+ |          |      +---------+  |          |
 | | 3. packet <--|        | |          |      |         |<--          |
 | |    enters    | netkit |<===========|======| netkit  |             |
 | |    [proxy]   | peer   |=======(eBPF)=====>| primary |             |
 | | 4. packet -->|        | |                 |         |             |
 | |    leaves    +--------+ |                 +---------+             |
 | |    sip=10.244.0.10      |                                         |
 | +-------------------------+                                         |
 +---------------------------------------------------------------------+

Using the proxy use case as an example, in step 5 we would redirect
traffic leaving the proxy towards the pod's peer device using
bpf_redirect_peer(BPF_F_EGRESS).

As a bonus, since the skb doesn't have to go through the backlog queue
it can take full advantage of netkit's performance benefits. I set up a
test where outgoing iperf3 traffic is injected into the datapath of
another pod using either bpf_redirect_peer(BPF_F_EGRESS) or
bpf_redirect(BPF_F_INGRESS). I used Cilium's eBPF host routing mode
which skips the host stack and uses BPF redirect helpers to do all the
routing.

  (net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control=cubic,mtu=1500,100GiB link,Cilium
   eBPF host routing mode)

BASELINE [bpf_redirect(BPF_F_INGRESS)]
  1. [iperf pod] ==bpf_redirect([pod b], BPF_F_INGRESS)==> [pod b]
  2. [pod b]     ==bpf_redirect_neigh([eth0])==>           eth0
  3. eth0        ==over network==>                         [host b]

  [ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
  [  5]   0.00-60.00  sec   231 GBytes  33.0 Gbits/sec  12060     sender
  [  5]   0.00-60.00  sec   230 GBytes  33.0 Gbits/sec            receiver

TEST [bpf_redirect_peer(BPF_F_EGRESS)]
  1. [iperf pod] ==bpf_redirect_peer([pod b], BPF_F_EGRESS)==> [pod b]
  2. [pod b]     ==bpf_redirect_neigh([eth0])==>               eth0
  3. eth0        ==over network==>                             [host b]

  [ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
  [  5]   0.00-60.00  sec   272 GBytes  38.9 Gbits/sec    0       sender
  [  5]   0.00-60.00  sec   272 GBytes  38.9 Gbits/sec            receiver

In this test, using bpf_redirect_peer(BPF_F_EGRESS) for the hop from
[iperf pod] to [pod b] led to ~18% more throughput compared to
bpf_redirect(BPF_F_INGRESS).

Signed-off-by: Jordan Rife <jordan@jrife.io>
Acked-by: Daniel Borkmann <daniel@iogearbox.net>
Acked-by: Paul Chaignon <paul.chaignon@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Jiayuan Chen <jiayuan.chen@linux.dev>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20260618182035.43811-2-jordan@jrife.io
Signed-off-by: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>
2026-06-25 17:39:35 -07:00
..
6lowpan 6lowpan: fix NHC entry use-after-free on error path 2026-06-11 15:27:07 -07:00
9p 9p: Add missing read barrier in virtio zero-copy path 2026-06-21 05:22:57 +00:00
802 appletalk: move the protocol out of tree 2026-06-16 14:37:06 -07:00
8021q vlan: defer real device state propagation to netdev_work 2026-06-25 10:18:40 -07:00
atm Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2026-06-16 14:59:58 -07:00
batman-adv batman-adv: tvlv: avoid race of cifsnotfound handler state 2026-06-14 12:33:18 +02:00
bluetooth Bluetooth: L2CAP: validate connectionless PSM length 2026-06-11 14:24:41 -04:00
bpf bpf: Fix partial copy of non-linear test_run output 2026-06-21 17:55:06 -07:00
bridge netfilter: nft_meta_bridge: fix NFT_META_BRI_IIFPVID stack leak 2026-06-21 00:18:37 +02:00
can Networking changes for 7.1. 2026-04-14 18:36:10 -07:00
ceph libceph: Fix potential null-ptr-deref in decode_choose_args() 2026-05-12 21:00:59 +02:00
core bpf: Support BPF_F_EGRESS with bpf_redirect_peer 2026-06-25 17:39:35 -07:00
dcb Convert 'alloc_obj' family to use the new default GFP_KERNEL argument 2026-02-21 17:09:51 -08:00
devlink devlink: Fix parent ref leak on tc-bw failure 2026-06-18 18:02:29 -07:00
dns_resolver net/dns_resolver: use kasprintf + kmemdup_nul to simplify dns_query 2026-06-04 18:39:29 -07:00
dsa net: dsa: tag_yt921x: handle ACL tag code 2026-06-10 08:26:05 -07:00
ethernet bonding: prevent potential infinite loop in bond_header_parse() 2026-03-16 19:29:45 -07:00
ethtool net: ethtool: keep rtnl_lock for ops using ethtool_op_get_link() 2026-06-25 10:18:34 -07:00
handshake handshake: Require admin permission for DONE command 2026-06-12 15:45:44 -07:00
hsr net: hsr: simplify fill_last_seq_nrs() 2026-06-12 16:20:28 -07:00
ieee802154 ieee802154: allow legacy LLSEC ADD/DEL ops to pass strict validation 2026-06-19 23:02:42 +02:00
ife net: ife: require ETH_HLEN to be pullable in ife_decode() 2026-06-13 17:34:39 -07:00
ipv4 Including fixes from netfilter and IPsec. 2026-06-25 12:25:36 -07:00
ipv6 ipv6: fix missing notification for ignore_routes_with_linkdown 2026-06-23 19:12:48 -07:00
iucv Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2026-05-28 14:02:21 -07:00
kcm Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2026-06-16 14:59:58 -07:00
key ipsec-2026-06-22 2026-06-23 16:22:24 -07:00
l2tp Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2026-06-04 15:29:04 -07:00
l3mdev
lapb treewide: Replace kmalloc with kmalloc_obj for non-scalar types 2026-02-21 01:02:28 -08:00
llc net: llc: make empty have static storage duration 2026-06-18 17:52:56 -07:00
mac80211 Quite a few last updates, notably: 2026-06-10 07:59:45 -07:00
mac802154 mac802154: Prevent overwrite return code in mac802154_perform_association() 2026-06-19 22:55:16 +02:00
mctp mctp: convert to getsockopt_iter 2026-05-10 10:11:07 -07:00
mpls net: Remove rtnl_held of struct fib_dump_filter. 2026-06-08 17:06:23 -07:00
mptcp mptcp: options: rst: drop unused skb parameter 2026-06-11 15:33:39 -07:00
ncsi net: ncsi: fix skb leak in error paths 2026-03-06 17:34:48 -08:00
netfilter bpf-fixes 2026-06-25 14:09:26 -07:00
netlabel Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2026-06-11 14:33:35 -07:00
netlink Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2026-05-28 14:02:21 -07:00
nfc nfc: nci: uart: Constify struct tty_ldisc_ops 2026-06-11 20:21:32 +02:00
nsh
openvswitch openvswitch: conntrack: annotate ct limit hlist traversal 2026-06-25 08:38:00 -07:00
packet net/packet: fix TOCTOU race on mmap'd vnet_hdr in tpacket_snd() 2026-04-22 20:16:34 -07:00
phonet net: phonet: free phonet_device after RCU grace period 2026-06-08 17:37:07 -07:00
psample net: psample: fix info leak in PSAMPLE_ATTR_DATA 2026-06-17 16:35:50 -07:00
psp psp: add a new netdev event for dev unregister 2026-06-12 18:31:32 -07:00
qrtr Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2026-06-16 14:59:58 -07:00
rds Including fixes from netfilter and IPsec. 2026-06-25 12:25:36 -07:00
rfkill rfkill: Replace strcpy() with memcpy() 2026-06-10 10:22:47 +02:00
rxrpc rxrpc: Fix rxrpc_rotate_tx_rotate() to check there's something to rotate 2026-06-25 10:07:19 -07:00
sched net/sched: cls_api: Handle TC_ACT_CONSUMED in tcf_qevent_handle 2026-06-23 19:08:36 -07:00
sctp sctp: fix err_chunk memory leaks in INIT handling 2026-06-23 19:09:26 -07:00
shaper net: shaper: add a note that we expect cap dumps to be tiny 2026-06-11 12:55:23 +02:00
smc Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2026-05-28 14:02:21 -07:00
strparser net: strparser: fix skb_head leak in strp_abort_strp() 2026-04-14 12:37:00 +02:00
sunrpc NFS Client Updates for Linux 7.2 2026-06-23 18:36:41 -07:00
switchdev bridge: No DEV_PATH_BR_VLAN_UNTAG_HW for dsa foreign 2026-03-19 13:14:00 +01:00
tipc tipc: avoid busy looping in tipc_exit_net() 2026-06-25 08:53:00 -07:00
tls net: skmsg: preserve sg.copy across SG transforms 2026-06-16 14:38:46 -07:00
unix Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2026-06-04 15:29:04 -07:00
vmw_vsock vsock: fold sk_acceptq_removed() into vsock_remove_pending() 2026-06-13 10:39:26 -07:00
wireless Quite a few last updates, notably: 2026-06-10 07:59:45 -07:00
x25 x25: convert to getsockopt_iter 2026-05-10 10:11:08 -07:00
xdp Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2026-06-04 15:29:04 -07:00
xfrm ipsec-2026-06-22 2026-06-23 16:22:24 -07:00
compat.c net: Remove support for AIO on sockets 2026-05-29 14:05:30 +08:00
devres.c
Kconfig appletalk: move the protocol out of tree 2026-06-16 14:37:06 -07:00
Kconfig.debug
Makefile appletalk: move the protocol out of tree 2026-06-16 14:37:06 -07:00
socket.c Networking changes for 7.2. 2026-06-17 08:17:00 +01:00
sysctl_net.c