tc-u32(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | VALUES | OPTIONS | SELECTORS | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

Universal 32b...ssifier in tc(8)  Linux Universal 32b...ssifier in tc(8)

NAME         top

       u32 - universal 32bit traffic control filter

SYNOPSIS         top

       tc filter ... [ handle HANDLE ] u32 OPTION_LIST [ offset OFFSET ]
               [ hashkey HASHKEY ] [ classid CLASSID ] [ divisor
               uint_value ] [ order u32_value ] [ ht HANDLE ] [ sample
               SELECTOR [ divisor uint_value ] ] [ link HANDLE ] [ indev
               ifname ] [ skip_hw | skip_sw ] [ help ]

       HANDLE := { u12_hex_htid:[u8_hex_hash:[u12_hex_nodeid] |
               0xu32_hex_value }

       OPTION_LIST := [ OPTION_LIST ] OPTION

       HASHKEY := [ mask u32_hex_value ] [ at 4*int_value ]

       CLASSID := { root | none | [u16_major]:u16_minor | u32_hex_value
               }

       OFFSET := [ plus int_value ] [ at 2*int_value ] [ mask
               u16_hex_value ] [ shift int_value ] [ eat ]

       OPTION := { match SELECTOR | action ACTION }

       SELECTOR := { u32 VAL_MASK_32 | u16 VAL_MASK_16 | u8 VAL_MASK_8 |
               ip IP | ip6 IP6 | { tcp | udp } TCPUDP | icmp ICMP | mark
               VAL_MASK_32 | ether ETHER }

       IP := { { src | dst } { default | any | all | ip_address [ / {
               prefixlen | netmask } ] } AT | { dsfield | ihl | protocol
               | precedence | icmp_type | icmp_code } VAL_MASK_8 | {
               sport | dport } VAL_MASK_16 | nofrag | firstfrag | df |
               mf }

       IP6 := { { src | dst } { default | any | all | ip6_address
               [/prefixlen ] } AT | priority VAL_MASK_8 | { protocol |
               icmp_type | icmp_code } VAL_MASK_8 | flowlabel
               VAL_MASK_32 | { sport | dport } VAL_MASK_16 }

       TCPUDP := { src | dst } VAL_MASK_16

       ICMP := { type VAL_MASK_8 | code VAL_MASK_8 }

       ETHER := { src | dst } ether_address AT

       VAL_MASK_32 := u32_value u32_hex_mask [ AT ]

       VAL_MASK_16 := u16_value u16_hex_mask [ AT ]

       VAL_MASK_8 := u8_value u8_hex_mask [ AT ]

       AT := [ at [ nexthdr+ ] int_value ]

DESCRIPTION         top

       The Universal/Ugly 32bit filter allows one to match arbitrary
       bitfields in the packet. Due to breaking everything down to
       values, masks and offsets, It is equally powerful and hard to
       use. Luckily many abstracting directives are present which allow
       defining rules on a higher level and therefore free the user from
       having to fiddle with bits and masks in many cases.

       There are two general modes of invocation: The first mode creates
       a new filter to delegate packets to different destinations. Apart
       from the obvious ones, namely classifying the packet by
       specifying a CLASSID or calling an action, one may link one
       filter to another one (or even a list of them), effectively
       organizing filters into a tree-like hierarchy.

       Typically filter delegation is done by means of a hash table,
       which leads to the second mode of invocation: it merely serves to
       set up these hash tables. Filters can select a hash table and
       provide a key selector from which a hash is to be computed and
       used as key to lookup the table's bucket which contains filters
       for further processing. This is useful if a high number of
       filters is in use, as the overhead of performing the hash
       operation and table lookup becomes negligible in that case. Using
       hashtables with u32 basically involves the following pattern:

       (1) Creating a new hash table, specifying it's size using the
           divisor parameter and ideally a handle by which the table can
           be identified. If the latter is not given, the kernel chooses
           one on it's own, which has to be guessed later.

       (2) Creating filters which link to the created table in (1) using
           the link parameter and defining the packet data which the
           kernel will use to calculate the hashkey.

       (3) Adding filters to buckets in the hash table from (1).  In
           order to avoid having to know how exactly the kernel creates
           the hash key, there is the sample parameter, which gives
           sample data to hash and thereby define the table bucket the
           filter should be added to.

       In fact, even if not explicitly requested u32 creates a hash
       table for every priority a filter is being added with. The
       table's size is 1 though, so it is in fact merely a linked list.

VALUES         top

       Options and selectors require values to be specified in a
       specific format, which is often non-intuitive. Therefore the
       terminals in SYNOPSIS have been given descriptive names to
       indicate the required format and/or maximum allowed numeric
       value: Prefixes u32, u16 and u8 indicate four, two and single
       byte unsigned values. E.g.  u16 indicates a two byte-sized value
       in range between 0 and 65535 (0xFFFF) inclusive. A prefix of int
       indicates a four byte signed value. A middle part of _hex_
       indicates that the value is parsed in hexadecimal format.
       Otherwise, the value's base is automatically detected, i.e.
       values prefixed with 0x are considered hexadecimal, a leading 0
       indicates octal format and decimal format otherwise. There are
       some values with special formatting as well: ip_address and
       netmask are in dotted-quad formatting as usual for IPv4
       addresses. An ip6_address is specified in common, colon-separated
       hexadecimal format. Finally, prefixlen is an unsigned, decimal
       integer value in range from 0 to the address width in bits (32
       for IPv4 and 128 for IPv6).

       Sometimes values need to be dividable by a certain number. In
       that case a name of the form N*val was chosen, indicating that
       val must be dividable by N.  Or the other way around: the
       resulting value must be a multiple of N.

OPTIONS         top

       U32 recognizes the following options:

       handle HANDLE
              The handle is used to reference a filter and therefore
              must be unique. It consists of a hash table identifier
              htid and optional hash (which identifies the hash table's
              bucket) and nodeid.  All these values are parsed as
              unsigned, hexadecimal numbers with length 12bits ( htid
              and nodeid) or 8bits ( hash).  Alternatively one may
              specify a single, 32bit long hex number which contains the
              three fields bits in concatenated form. Other than the
              fields themselves, it has to be prefixed by 0x.

       offset OFFSET
              Set an offset which defines where matches of subsequent
              filters are applied to.  Therefore this option is useful
              only when combined with link or a combination of ht and
              sample.  The offset may be given explicitly by using the
              plus keyword, or extracted from the packet data with at.
              It is possible to mangle the latter using mask and/or
              shift keywords. By default, this offset is recorded but
              not implicitly applied. It is used only to substitute the
              nexthdr+ statement. Using the keyword eat though inverses
              this behaviour: the offset is applied always, and nexthdr+
              will fall back to zero.

       hashkey HASHKEY
              Specify what packet data to use to calculate a hash key
              for bucket lookup. The kernel adjusts the value according
              to the hash table's size. For this to work, the option
              link must be given.

       classid CLASSID
              Classify matching packets into the given CLASSID, which
              consists of either 16bit major and minor numbers or a
              single 32bit value combining both.

       divisor u32_value
              Specify a modulo value. Used when creating hash tables to
              define their size or for declaring a sample to calculate
              hash table keys from. Must be a power of two with exponent
              not exceeding eight.

       order u32_value
              A value to order filters by, ascending. Conflicts with
              handle which serves the same purpose.

       sample SELECTOR
              Used together with ht to specify which bucket to add this
              filter to. This allows one to avoid having to know how
              exactly the kernel calculates hashes. The additional
              divisor defaults to 256, so must be given for hash tables
              of different size.

       link HANDLE
              Delegate matching packets to filters in a hash table.
              HANDLE is used to only specify the hash table, so only
              htid may be given, hash and nodeid have to be omitted. By
              default, bucket number 0 will be used and can be
              overridden by the hashkey option.

       indev ifname
              Filter on the incoming interface of the packet. Obviously
              works only for forwarded traffic.

       skip_sw
              Do not process filter by software. If hardware has no
              offload support for this filter, or TC offload is not
              enabled for the interface, operation will fail.

       skip_hw
              Do not process filter by hardware.

       help   Print a brief help text about possible options.

SELECTORS         top

       Basically the only real selector is u32 .  All others merely
       provide a higher level syntax and are internally translated into
       u32 .

       u32 VAL_MASK_32
       u16 VAL_MASK_16
       u8 VAL_MASK_8
              Match packet data to a given value. The selector name
              defines the sample length to extract (32bits for u32,
              16bits for u16 and 8bits for u8).  Before comparing, the
              sample is binary AND'ed with the given mask. This way
              uninteresting bits can be cleared before comparison. The
              position of the sample is defined by the offset specified
              in AT.

       ip IP
       ip6 IP6
              Assume packet starts with an IPv4 ( ip) or IPv6 ( ip6)
              header.  IP/IP6 then allows one to match various header
              fields:

              src ADDR
              dst ADDR
                     Compare Source or Destination Address fields
                     against the value of ADDR.  The reserved words
                     default, any and all effectively match any address.
                     Otherwise an IP address of the particular protocol
                     is expected, optionally suffixed by a prefix length
                     to match whole subnets. In case of IPv4 a netmask
                     may also be given.

              dsfield VAL_MASK_8
                     IPv4 only. Match the packet header's DSCP/ECN
                     field. Synonyms to this are tos and precedence.

              ihl VAL_MASK_8
                     IPv4 only. Match the Internet Header Length field.
                     Note that the value's unit is 32bits, so to match a
                     packet with 24byte header length u8_value has to be
                     6.

              protocol VAL_MASK_8
                     Match the Protocol (IPv4) or Next Header (IPv6)
                     field value, e.g. 6 for TCP.

              icmp_type VAL_MASK_8
              icmp_code VAL_MASK_8
                     Assume a next-header protocol of icmp or ipv6-icmp
                     and match Type or Code field values. This is
                     dangerous, as the code assumes minimal header size
                     for IPv4 and lack of extension headers for IPv6.

              sport VAL_MASK_16
              dport VAL_MASK_16
                     Match layer four source or destination ports. This
                     is dangerous as well, as it assumes a suitable
                     layer four protocol is present (which has Source
                     and Destination Port fields right at the start of
                     the header and 16bit in size).  Also minimal header
                     size for IPv4 and lack of IPv6 extension headers is
                     assumed.

              nofrag
              firstfrag
              df
              mf     IPv4 only, check certain flags and fragment offset
                     values. Match if the packet is not a fragment
                     (nofrag), the first fragment of a fragmented packet
                     (firstfrag), if Don't Fragment (df) or More
                     Fragments (mf) bits are set.

              priority VAL_MASK_8
                     IPv6 only. Match the header's Traffic Class field,
                     which has the same purpose and semantics of IPv4's
                     ToS field since RFC 3168: upper six bits are DSCP,
                     the lower two ECN.

              flowlabel VAL_MASK_32
                     IPv6 only. Match the Flow Label field's value. Note
                     that Flow Label itself is only 20bytes long, which
                     are the least significant ones here. The remaining
                     upper 12bytes match Version and Traffic Class
                     fields.

       tcp TCPUDP
       udp TCPUDP
              Match fields of next header of protocol TCP or UDP. The
              possible values for TCPDUP are:

              src VAL_MASK_16
                     Match on Source Port field value.

              dst VALMASK_16
                     Match on Destination Port field value.

       icmp ICMP
              Match fields of next header of protocol ICMP. The possible
              values for ICMP are:

              type VAL_MASK_8
                     Match on ICMP Type field.

              code VAL_MASK_8
                     Match on ICMP Code field.

       mark VAL_MASK_32
              Match on netfilter fwmark value.

       ether ETHER
              Match on ethernet header fields. Possible values for ETHER
              are:

              src ether_address AT
              dst ether_address AT
                     Match on source or destination ethernet address.
                     This is dangerous: It assumes an ethernet header is
                     present at the start of the packet. This will
                     probably lead to unexpected things if used with
                     layer three interfaces like e.g. tun or ppp.

EXAMPLES         top

              tc filter add dev eth0 parent 999:0 prio 99 protocol ip u32 \
                      match ip src 192.168.8.0/24 classid 1:1

       This attaches a filter to the qdisc identified by 999:0.  It's
       priority is 99, which affects in which order multiple filters
       attached to the same parent are consulted (the lower the
       earlier). The filter handles packets of protocol type ip, and
       matches if the IP header's source address is within the
       192.168.8.0/24 subnet. Matching packets are classified into class
       1.1.  The effect of this command might be surprising at first
       glance:

              filter parent 1: protocol ip pref 99 u32
              filter parent 1: protocol ip pref 99 u32 \
                      fh 800: ht divisor 1
              filter parent 1: protocol ip pref 99 u32 \
                      fh 800::800 order 2048 key ht 800 bkt 0 flowid 1:1 \
                      match c0a80800/ffffff00 at 12

       So parent 1: is assigned a new u32 filter, which contains a hash
       table of size 1 (as the divisor indicates). The table ID is 800.
       The third line then shows the actual filter which was added
       above: it sits in table 800 and bucket 0, classifies packets into
       class ID 1:1 and matches the upper three bytes of the four byte
       value at offset 12 to be 0xc0a808, which is 192, 168 and 8.

       Now for something more complicated, namely creating a custom hash
       table:

              tc filter add dev eth0 prio 99 handle 1: u32 divisor 256

       This creates a table of size 256 with handle 1: in priority 99.
       The effect is as follows:

              filter parent 1: protocol all pref 99 u32
              filter parent 1: protocol all pref 99 u32 fh 1: ht divisor 256
              filter parent 1: protocol all pref 99 u32 fh 800: ht divisor 1

       So along with the requested hash table (handle 1:), the kernel
       has created his own table of size 1 to hold other filters of the
       same priority.

       The next step is to create a filter which links to the created
       hash table:

              tc filter add dev eth0 parent 1: prio 1 u32 \
                      link 1: hashkey mask 0x0000ff00 at 12 \
                      match ip src 192.168.0.0/16

       The filter is given a lower priority than the hash table itself
       so u32 consults it before manually traversing the hash table. The
       options link and hashkey determine which table and bucket to
       redirect to. In this case the hash key should be constructed out
       of the second byte at offset 12, which corresponds to an IP
       packet's third byte of the source address field. Along with the
       match statement, this effectively maps all class C networks below
       192.168.0.0/16 to different buckets of the hash table.

       Filters for certain subnets can be created like so:

              tc filter add dev eth0 parent 1: prio 99 u32 \
                      ht 1: sample u32 0x00000800 0x0000ff00 at 12 \
                      match ip src 192.168.8.0/24 classid 1:1

       The bucket is defined using the sample option: In this case, the
       second byte at offset 12 must be 0x08, exactly. In this case, the
       resulting bucket ID is obviously 8, but as soon as sample selects
       an amount of data which could exceed the divisor, one would have
       to know the kernel-internal algorithm to deduce the destination
       bucket. This filter's match statement is redundant in this case,
       as the entropy for the hash key does not exceed the table size
       and therefore no collisions can occur. Otherwise it's necessary
       to prevent matching unwanted packets.

       Matching upper layer fields is problematic since IPv4 header
       length is variable and IPv6 supports extension headers which
       affect upper layer header offset. To overcome this, there is the
       possibility to specify nexthdr+ when giving an offset, and to
       make things easier there are the tcp and udp matches which use
       nexthdr+ implicitly. This offset has to be calculated in
       beforehand though, and the only way to achieve that is by doing
       it in a separate filter which then links to the filter which
       wants to use it. Here is an example of doing so:

              tc filter add dev eth0 parent 1:0 protocol ip handle 1: \
                      u32 divisor 1
              tc filter add dev eth0 parent 1:0 protocol ip \
                      u32 ht 1: \
                      match tcp src 22 FFFF \
                      classid 1:2
              tc filter add dev eth0 parent 1:0 protocol ip \
                      u32 ht 800: \
                      match ip protocol 6 FF \
                      match u16 0 1fff at 6 \
                      offset at 0 mask 0f00 shift 6 \
                      link 1:

       This is what is being done: In the first call, a single element
       sized hash table is created so there is a place to hold the
       linked to filter and a known handle (1:) to reference to it. The
       second call then adds the actual filter, which pushes packets
       with TCP source port 22 into class 1:2.  Using ht, it is moved
       into the hash table created by the first call. The third call
       then does the actual magic: It matches IPv4 packets with next
       layer protocol 6 (TCP), only if it's the first fragment (usually
       TCP sets DF bit, but if it doesn't and the packet is fragmented,
       only the first one contains the TCP header), and then sets the
       offset based on the IP header's IHL field (right-shifting by 6
       eliminates the offset of the field and at the same time converts
       the value into byte unit). Finally, using link, the hash table
       from first call is referenced which holds the filter from second
       call.

SEE ALSO         top

       tc(8),
       cls_u32.txt at http://linux-tc-notes.sourceforge.net/ 

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the iproute2 (utilities for controlling
       TCP/IP networking and traffic) project.  Information about the
       project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/networking/iproute2⟩.
       If you have a bug report for this manual page, send it to
       netdev@vger.kernel.org, shemminger@osdl.org.  This page was
       obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/network/iproute2/iproute2.git⟩ on
       2023-12-22.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
       that was found in the repository was 2023-12-20.)  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
       or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for
       the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
       information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original
       manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

iproute2                       25 Sep 201U5niversal 32b...ssifier in tc(8)

Pages that refer to this page: tc(8)tc-ife(8)tc-mirred(8)tc-pedit(8)tc-skbmod(8)tc-xt(8)