ETF(8) Linux ETF(8)
NAME
ETF - Earliest TxTime First (ETF) Qdisc
SYNOPSIS
tc qdisc ... dev dev parent classid [ handle major: ] etf clockid
clockid [ delta delta_nsecs ] [ deadline_mode ] [ offload ]
DESCRIPTION
The ETF (Earliest TxTime First) qdisc allows applications to control
the instant when a packet should be dequeued from the traffic control
layer into the netdevice. If offload is configured and supported by the
network interface card, the it will also control when packets leave the
network controller.
ETF achieves that by buffering packets until a configurable time before
their transmission time (i.e. txtime, or deadline), which can be con-
figured through the delta option.
The qdisc uses a rb-tree internally so packets are always 'ordered' by
their txtime and will be dequeued following the (next) earliest txtime
first.
It relies on the SO_TXTIME socket option and the SCM_TXTIME CMSG in
each packet field to configure the behavior of time dependent sockets:
the clockid to be used as a reference, if the expected mode of txtime
for that socket is deadline or strict mode, and if packet drops should
be reported on the socket's error queue. See socket(7) for more infor-
mation.
The etf qdisc will drop any packets with a txtime in the past, or if a
packet expires while waiting for being dequeued.
This queueing discipline is intended to be used by TSN (Time Sensitive
Networking) applications, and it exposes a traffic shaping functional-
ity that is commonly documented as "Launch Time" or "Time-Based Sched-
uling" by vendors and the documentation of network interface con-
trollers.
ETF is meant to be installed under another qdisc that maps packet flows
to traffic classes, one example is mqprio(8).
PARAMETERS
clockid
Specifies the clock to be used by qdisc's internal timer for
measuring time and scheduling events. The qdisc expects that
packets passing through it to be using this same clockid as the
reference of their txtime timestamps. It will drop packets com-
ing from sockets that do not comply with that.
For more information about time and clocks on Linux, please re-
fer to time(7) and clock_gettime(3).
delta
After enqueueing or dequeueing a packet, the qdisc will schedule
its next wake-up time for the next txtime minus this delta
value. This means delta can be used as a fudge factor for the
scheduler latency of a system. This value must be specified in
nanoseconds. The default value is 0 nanoseconds.
deadline_mode
When deadline_mode is set, the qdisc will handle txtime with a
different semantics, changed from a 'strict' transmission time
to a deadline. In practice, this means during the dequeue flow
etf(8) will set the txtime of the packet being dequeued to
'now'. The default is for this option to be disabled.
offload
When offload is set, etf(8) will try to configure the network
interface so time-based transmission arbitration is enabled in
the controller. This feature is commonly referred to as "Launch
Time" or "Time-Based Scheduling" by the documentation of network
interface controllers. The default is for this option to be
disabled.
skip_sock_check
etf(8) currently drops any packet which does not have a socket
associated with it or if the socket does not have SO_TXTIME
socket option set. But, this will not work if the launchtime is
set by another entity inside the kernel (e.g. some other Qdisc).
Setting the skip_sock_check will skip checking for a socket as-
sociated with the packet.
EXAMPLES
ETF is used to enforce a Quality of Service. It controls when each
packets should be dequeued and transmitted, and can be used for limit-
ing the data rate of a traffic class. To separate packets into traffic
classes the user may choose mqprio(8), and configure it like this:
# tc qdisc add dev eth0 handle 100: parent root mqprio num_tc 3 \
map 2 2 1 0 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 \
queues 1@0 1@1 2@2 \
hw 0
To replace the current queueing discipline by ETF in traffic class num-
ber 0, issue:
# tc qdisc replace dev eth0 parent 100:1 etf \
clockid CLOCK_TAI delta 300000 offload
With the options above, etf will be configured to use CLOCK_TAI as its
clockid_t, will schedule packets for 300 us before their txtime, and
will enable the functionality on that in the network interface card.
Deadline mode will not be configured for this mode.
AUTHORS
Jesus Sanchez-Palencia <jesus.sanchez-palencia@intel.com>
Vinicius Costa Gomes <vinicius.gomes@intel.com>
iproute2 05 Jul 2018 ETF(8)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 06:02:56 CET 2025.