Abstract
During the development and maintenance of complex network infrastructure for a big project, developers face a lot of problems. Although there exist plenty of tools and software that helps to troubleshoot such problems, their functionality is limited by the API that Linux kernel provides. Usually, they are narrowly targeted on solving one problem and cannot show a system-wide network stack view, which could be helpful in finding the source of the malfunction. This situation could be changed with the appearance of a new type of tools powered by the Linux kernel's eBPF technology, which provides a flexible and powerful way to run a userspace code inside the kernel. In this paper, an approach to tracing the path of network packets in the Linux kernel using eBPF is described.
Highlights
Software and hardware solutions are becoming increasingly complex, which leads to an increasingly complex network infrastructure that lies at the basis of such solutions
The «system-wide network stack view» means a path of the network packet through Linux's networking stack
It can be done with the use of extended BPF (eBPF) technology
Summary
Software and hardware solutions are becoming increasingly complex, which leads to an increasingly complex network infrastructure that lies at the basis of such solutions. Most of the tools, being narrowly targeted on solving specific issues, do not help either Though doing their job very well, they cannot provide a system-wide network stack view, which could help us solve non-obvious problems in complex network infrastructures. The «system-wide network stack view» means a path of the network packet through Linux's networking stack It shows which functions processed the packet and for how long, where it was consumed or dropped, or if it went the wrong way, not intended by the network architecture. With this information, the developer could narrow down the scope of troubleshooting and solve the problem quickly with the use of the appropriate tools. It can be done with the use of eBPF technology
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