Infiniband Gateway/Bridge

[serverx]

Hello, i would like to converge my IPv4 private lan to the ipoverib network..... i read that is possible using a server configured as Grateway/Bridge, i searched a lot but i couldnt found any guide and how-to.....
somebody can help me ? (i have already the IB switch without the Iintegrated gateway, too much expencive)
Thanks

 

[Scott Laird]

Any server that is connected to both networks and is able to route traffic (I've never actually tried this with Windows, but it's trivial with Linux) should be able to do this.

The tricky part is getting everything configured so that the router that connects you to the Internet knows how to send traffic to the Ethernet/IB router. Depending on what you're using, that'll be somewhere between trivial and impossible. There's nothing IB-specific about it, though--it's just IP routing.

 

[Chuntzu]

Linux masquerade is how it accomplished. But I will mention that even when I got got it working (which was a very long time ago so I can't recall the steps precisely) it wasn't all that great since IP traffic outside my network was less than 1gbit so it wasn't necessary to bridge the two networks. With that said if you need IP routing with ipoib look at roce and data center bridging. My experience is with Windows server but this is where I would start looking now instead of combining traffic.

 

[Scott Laird]

Masquarade would work, but it's not really ideal. Avoid NAT whenever you can, and your life will be better. Just make sure each interface has an IP address, make sure routing isn't disabled, and then make sure your other router(s) have a route to send the IB network's traffic to the gateway box.

RoCE and DCB are interesting, but not particularly useful for getting IP traffic onto and off of an IB network.