The big networking subsystem feature pull was sent out this morning for the Linux 6.14 merge window.
From new wired and wireless network hardware support to new core networking subsystem enhancements, the networking area of the kernel continues to be quite lively each cycle. The Linux 6.14 networking features update has a nice mix of core improvements as well as wired, WiFi, and Bluetooth enhancements for different chipsets from consumer hardware up through servers and hyperscaler equipment.
Some of the Linux 6.14 networking highlights include:
– Continued networking core refactoring for reducing RTNL lock contention. Red Hat’s Paolo Abeni who sent in the networking pull request for Linux 6.14 describes this RTNL lock contention refactoring as among “the most interesting work” this cycle.
– Significant XDP socket code refactoring with new optimizations and code consolidation.
– Better scaling of ICMP rate-limiting.
– Support for Jumbo Data Packet transmission in RxRPC sockets for connecting multiple data packets within a single UDP packet.
– Support for RxRPC RACK-TLP to manage packet loss and re-transmission.
– Continued work around WiFi Multi-Link Operation (WiFi MLO) support.
– Intel IGB AF_XDP zero-copy support.
– The Intel IXGBE driver adds support for the Intel E610 chipset variant.
– The Broadcom BNXT driver adds support for Device Memory TCP.
– The Synopsys STMMAC driver has optimized DMA and cache access to increase raw transfer performance by 40%.
– The Realtek 8169 Ethernet driver adds support for the RTL8125D rev.b chipset.
– Temperature sensor support for the Realtek rtl822x driver.
– The NVIDIA Mellanox MLX5 driver adds software steering support for ConnectX-8.
– Emergency Preparedness Communication Services (EPCS) station mode support within the Linux mac80211/cfg80211 code.
– Support for WiFi 7 / EHT mesh over 320Mhz channels.
– The Realtek RTW88 WiFi drver has enabled USB Rx aggregation and USB 3 mode to improve performance.
– The Realtek RTW89 WiFi driver adds support for the RTL8922AE-VS chipset.
– P2P device support for the MediaTek MT76 WiFi driver.
– The MediaTek Bluetooth driver adds support for the MT7922, MT7925, and MT7921e devices.
– The Realtek Bluetooth driver adds support for RTL8851BE devices.
See the networking pull for the lengthy list of patches in full that are targeting Linux 6.14 on the networking side.
