[Users] Bridging an IPoIB Interface in Linux

[Narayan Desai]

Nope. IPoIB doesn't provide a full ethernet interface, so it isn't
suitable for use with ethernet bridging. It isn't so much a limitation
with current drivers as much as an impedance mismatch between APIs.
IPoIB won't ever be able to do this.

There are some alternative drivers, but the story isn't great with any
of them yet. I've had initial luck with eoipoib, which provides an
ethernet interface over ipoib frames, but there is a weird user space
agent that needs to push mac address information into the system. I've
found that user space daemon to be lacking so far; I needed to hack it
to get it working on ubuntu. (it is also advertised as alpha quality,
so caveat emptor) performance appeared to be about half of ipoib.

There is also eoib, which appears to be discontinued; mellanox used to
make a line of hardware bridges that converted between eoib and
ethernet. The bridge functioned as a controller for the eoib network,
but these are now discontinued.
 -nld

On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 5:06 PM, Russell Dekema <dekemar at umich.edu> wrote:
> Good afternoon,
>
> Is it possible to add an IPoIB interface to a Linux network bridge? I was
> messing with OFED 3.5 on Ubuntu 12.04.02 but received the following error:
>
> # brctl addbr br0
> # brctl addif br0 ib0
> can't add ib0 to bridge br0: Invalid argument
>
> If IPoIB interfaces can't be bridged at the moment due to inherent driver
> problems, that is fine. Otherwise, I would be curious to know what
> configurations (Linux distribution, OFED version, IB hardware) people have
> been able to make this work on.
>
> Thanks,
> Rusty Dekema
>
> [Writing for myself, not on behalf of any employer.]
>
>
>
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