Programmable Socket Lookup with BPF

Explore a conference talk from the Linux Plumbers Conference that delves into programmable socket lookup using BPF (Berkeley Packet Filter). Learn about an alternative to steering packets into sockets with iptables and TPROXY extension, allowing services to share port numbers and reverse proxies to listen on all available ports. Discover the new BPF program type BPF_INET_LOOKUP and its role in socket lookup. Compare BPF-driven socket lookup to classic bind()-based dispatch, TPROXY packet steering, and socket dispatch on TC ingress. Examine implementation challenges, performance aspects, and usability of user-space API. Gain insights into the steps needed to advance this technology from an RFC series to a ready-for-review submission.