12.1. The u32 classifier

The U32 filter is the most advanced filter available in the current implementation. It entirely based on hashing tables, which make it robust when there are many filter rules.

In its simplest form the U32 filter is a list of records, each consisting of two fields: a selector and an action. The selectors, described below, are compared with the currently processed IP packet until the first match occurs, and then the associated action is performed. The simplest type of action would be directing the packet into defined CBQ class.

The command line of tc filter program, used to configure the filter, consists of three parts: filter specification, a selector and an action. The filter specification can be defined as:

tc filter add dev IF [ protocol PROTO ]
                     [ (preference|priority) PRIO ]
                     [ parent CBQ ]

The protocol field describes protocol that the filter will be applied to. We will only discuss case of ip protocol. The preference field (priority can be used alternatively) sets the priority of currently defined filter. This is important, since you can have several filters (lists of rules) with different priorities. Each list will be passed in the order the rules were added, then list with lower priority (higher preference number) will be processed. The parent field defines the CBQ tree top (e.g. 1:0), the filter should be attached to.

The options described above apply to all filters, not only U32.

12.1.1. U32 selector

The U32 selector contains definition of the pattern, that will be matched to the currently processed packet. Precisely, it defines which bits are to be matched in the packet header and nothing more, but this simple method is very powerful. Let's take a look at the following examples, taken directly from a pretty complex, real-world filter:

# tc filter add dev eth0 protocol ip parent 1:0 pref 10 u32 \
  match u32 00100000 00ff0000 at 0 flowid 1:10

For now, leave the first line alone - all these parameters describe the filter's hash tables. Focus on the selector line, containing match keyword. This selector will match to IP headers, whose second byte will be 0x10 (0010). As you can guess, the 00ff number is the match mask, telling the filter exactly which bits to match. Here it's 0xff, so the byte will match if it's exactly 0x10. The at keyword means that the match is to be started at specified offset (in bytes) -- in this case it's beginning of the packet. Translating all that to human language, the packet will match if its Type of Service field will have `low delay' bits set. Let's analyze another rule:

  match u32 00000016 0000ffff at nexthdr+0 flowid 1:10

The nexthdr option means next header encapsulated in the IP packet, i.e. header of upper-layer protocol. The match will also start here at the beginning of the next header. The match should occur in the second, 32-bit word of the header. In TCP and UDP protocols this field contains packet's destination port. The number is given in big-endian format, i.e. older bits first, so we simply read 0x0016 as 22 decimal, which stands for SSH service if this was TCP. As you guess, this match is ambiguous without a context, and we will discuss this later.

Having understood all the above, we will find the following selector quite easy to read: match c0a80100 ffffff00 at 16. What we got here is a three byte match at 17-th byte, counting from the IP header start. This will match for packets with destination address anywhere in 192.168.1/24 network. After analyzing the examples, we can summarize what we have learned.

12.1.2. General selectors

General selectors define the pattern, mask and offset the pattern will be matched to the packet contents. Using the general selectors you can match virtually any single bit in the IP (or upper layer) header. They are more difficult to write and read, though, than specific selectors that described below. The general selector syntax is:

match [ u32 | u16 | u8 ] PATTERN MASK [ at OFFSET | nexthdr+OFFSET]

One of the keywords u32, u16 or u8 specifies length of the pattern in bits. PATTERN and MASK should follow, of length defined by the previous keyword. The OFFSET parameter is the offset, in bytes, to start matching. If nexthdr+ keyword is given, the offset is relative to start of the upper layer header.

Some examples:

# tc filter add dev ppp14 parent 1:0 prio 10 u32 \
     match u8 64 0xff at 8 \
     flowid 1:4

Packet will match to this rule, if its time to live (TTL) is 64. TTL is the field starting just after 8-th byte of the IP header.

     match u8 0x10 0xff at nexthdr+13 \
     protocol tcp \
     flowid 1:3 

FIXME: it has been pointed out that this syntax does not work currently.

Use this to match ACKs on packets smaller than 64 bytes:

## match acks the hard way,
## IP protocol 6,
## IP header length 0x5(32 bit words),
## IP Total length 0x34 (ACK + 12 bytes of TCP options)
## TCP ack set (bit 5, offset 33)
# tc filter add dev ppp14 parent 1:0 protocol ip prio 10 u32 \
            match ip protocol 6 0xff \
            match u8 0x05 0x0f at 0 \
            match u16 0x0000 0xffc0 at 2 \
            match u8 0x10 0xff at 33 \
            flowid 1:3

This rule will only match TCP packets with ACK bit set, and no further payload. Here we can see an example of using two selectors, the final result will be logical AND of their results. If we take a look at TCP header diagram, we can see that the ACK bit is second older bit (0x10) in the 14-th byte of the TCP header (at nexthdr+13). As for the second selector, if we'd like to make our life harder, we could write match u8 0x06 0xff at 9 instead of using the specific selector protocol tcp, because 6 is the number of TCP protocol, present in 10-th byte of the IP header. On the other hand, in this example we couldn't use any specific selector for the first match - simply because there's no specific selector to match TCP ACK bits.

12.1.3. Specific selectors

The following table contains a list of all specific selectors the author of this section has found in the tc program source code. They simply make your life easier and increase readability of your filter's configuration.

FIXME: table placeholder - the table is in separate file ,,selector.html''

FIXME: it's also still in Polish :-(

FIXME: must be sgml'ized

Some examples:

# tc filter add dev ppp0 parent 1:0 prio 10 u32 \
     match ip tos 0x10 0xff \
     flowid 1:4

FIXME: tcp dst match does not work as described below:

The above rule will match packets which have the TOS field set to 0x10. The TOS field starts at second byte of the packet and is one byte big, so we could write an equivalent general selector: match u8 0x10 0xff at 1. This gives us hint to the internals of U32 filter -- the specific rules are always translated to general ones, and in this form they are stored in the kernel memory. This leads to another conclusion -- the tcp and udp selectors are exactly the same and this is why you can't use single match tcp dst 53 0xffff selector to match TCP packets sent to given port -- they will also match UDP packets sent to this port. You must remember to also specify the protocol and end up with the following rule:

        match tcp dst 53 0xffff \
        match ip protocol 0x6 0xff \
        flowid 1:2