BPFILTER, Net Failover Driver & Other Network Changes For Linux 4.18

David Miller has submitted the big platter of networking updates for the in-development Linux 4.18 kernel.

Arguably the most notable networking addition for Linux 4.18 is the new BPFILTER infrastructure that will eventually be used to replace existing firewall and packet filtering implementations within the kernel. The new BPFILTER-based solution should allow better security, easier maintenance, and potential performance wins via BPF JIT and hardware offloading. But for Linux 4.18 is just the initial framework and the user-mode helpers.

The networking updates also bring x86 32-bit (e)BPF JIT compiler support, BPF Type Format (BTF) support, various driver cleanups, documentation additions, and more. One of the new networking drivers for Linux 4.18 is the net_failover driver that can be useful for para-virtualized scenarios and more as outlined in that patch.

The complete list of networking feature work for Linux 4.18 can be found via this pull request.