Intel® Ethernet Adapters and Devices User Guide
Intel® Ethernet Flow Director
The Intel® Ethernet Flow Director (Intel® Ethernet FD) performs the following tasks:
Directs receive packets according to their flows to different queues
Enables tight control on routing a flow in the platform
Matches flows and CPU cores for flow affinity
Depending on the device family: Supports multiple parameters for flexible flow classification and load balancing (in SFP mode only)
Depending on the driver and device family, the driver might support the following flow types:
IPv4
TCPv4
UDPv4
SCTPv4
IPv6
TCPv6
UDPv6
SCTPv6
Each flow type supports valid combinations of IP addresses (source or destination) and UDP/TCP ports (source and destination). You can supply only a source IP address, a source IP address and a destination port, or any combination of one or more of these four parameters.
The following table summarizes supported Intel Ethernet Flow Director features across Intel Ethernet controllers.
Feature | 500 Series | 700 Series | 800 Series |
|---|---|---|---|
VF Flow Director | Supported | Routing to VF not supported | Not supported |
IP Address Range Filter | Supported | Not supported | Field masking |
IPv6 Support | Supported | Supported | Supported |
Configurable Input Set | Configured per port | Configured globally | Configured per port |
ATR | Supported | Supported | Not supported |
Flex Byte Filter | Starts at beginning of packet | Starts at beginning of payload | Starts at beginning of packet |
Tunneled Packets | Filter matches outer header | Filter matches inner header | Filter matches inner header |
See the Linux driver READMEs for more information on configuring this feature.