E1000/E1000e receive all multicast traffic

[Gabriel124]

Hello,

I used E1000/E1000e as network adapter in Linux and I found the network interface received all multicast traffic which meant vSwitch forwarded all multicast traffic to these interfaces.

I do not want the network interface see all multicast traffic because it will affect the vSwitch performance. How can I do?

I also knew VMXNET 3 can meet my requirement, but for some reasons, I have to use E1000/E1000e.

Gabriel

[schepp]

Hi,

your VM should not see multicast traffic that is not intended for it.

So either you missconfigured the vSwitch (promiscious mode enabled?) or your VM is in the receiving multicast group and it is intended that it sees the traffic.

VMware KB: Understanding IP Multicast in ESXi/ESX

Tim

[Gabriel124]

Hi Tim,

I am sure the vSwitch's promiscious mode was disabled.

I created 2 interfaces. One was E1000e and another was VMXNET3. VMXNET3 interface is the same as what you said. But E1000e's behavior was different from VMXNET3. I could capture all multicast packets by tcpdump on E1000e interface, not only the traffic that was intended.  By the way, these 2 interfaces were attached to the same vSwitch.

Here is my Linux version:

[gabriel@Linux-32 ~]$ cat /proc/version

Linux version 2.6.32-358.el6.i686 (mockbuild@x86-022.build.eng.bos.redhat.com) (gcc version 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-3) (GCC) ) #1 SMP Tue Jan 29 11:48:01 EST 2013

Gabriel

[Gabriel124 · Accepted solution]

I knew what's wrong with this case. I used tcpdump to see the multicast traffic which was approved unreliable. Tcpdump changed the E1000/E1000e configuration, so it could see multicast traffic.

At this time, I changed my method. I watched the packet statistics based on esxtop command. In QNX 6.5.0, I did the following steps:

1. Started QNX, let interface up. From esxtop, I didn't see VM received any packets.

2. Started tcpdump. I saw tcpdump captured multicast packets. Also from esxtop, I saw VM received the packets.

3. Stoped tcpdump. From esxtop, VM didn't receive any packets.

To be concluded, QNX with E1000/E1000e could support multicast packets. And tcpdump couldn't be used to see the multicast traffic.