Linux socket hardware timestamping

Question

I'm working on a project researching about network synchronisation. Since I want to achieve the best performance I'm trying to compare software timestamping results with hardware timestamping ones.

I have followed this previously commented issue: Linux kernel UDP reception timestamp but after several tests I got some problems when trying to get hardware reception timestamps.

My scenario is composed of 2 devices, a PC and a Gateworks Ventana board, both devices are supposed to be waiting for packets to be broadcasted in their network and timestamping their reception times, I have tried this code (some parts have been omitted):

int rc=1;
int flags;

flags   = SOF_TIMESTAMPING_RX_HARDWARE
        | SOF_TIMESTAMPING_RAW_HARDWARE;
rc = setsockopt(sock, SOL_SOCKET,SO_TIMESTAMPING, &flags, sizeof(flags));

rc = bind(sock, (struct sockaddr *) &serv_addr, sizeof(serv_addr));

struct msghdr msg;
struct iovec iov;
char pktbuf[2048];

char ctrl[CMSG_SPACE(sizeof(struct timespec))];
struct cmsghdr *cmsg = (struct cmsghdr *) &ctrl;

msg.msg_control = (char *) ctrl;
msg.msg_controllen = sizeof(ctrl);

msg.msg_name = &serv_addr;
msg.msg_namelen = sizeof(serv_addr);
msg.msg_iov = &iov;
msg.msg_iovlen = 1;
iov.iov_base = pktbuf;
iov.iov_len = sizeof(pktbuf);

//struct timeval time_kernel, time_user;
//int timediff = 0;

FILE *f = fopen("server.csv", "w");
if (f == NULL) {
    error("Error opening file!\n");
    exit(1);
}
fprintf(f, "Time\n");

struct timespec ts;
int level, type;
int i;
for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) {

    rc = recvmsg(sock, &msg, 0);


    for (cmsg = CMSG_FIRSTHDR(&msg); cmsg != NULL; cmsg = CMSG_NXTHDR(&msg, cmsg))
    {
        level = cmsg->cmsg_level;
        type  = cmsg->cmsg_type;
        if (SOL_SOCKET == level && SO_TIMESTAMPING == type) {
            //ts = (struct timespec *) CMSG_DATA(cmsg);
            memcpy(&ts, CMSG_DATA(cmsg), sizeof(ts));
            printf("HW TIMESTAMP %ld.%09ld\n", (long)ts.tv_sec, (long)ts.tv_nsec);
           }
    }

}

printf("COMPLETED\n");
fclose(f);
close(sock);
return 0;
}

In both devices the output I get after receiving a packet:

HW TIMESTAMP 0.000000000

On the other hand if with the same code my flags are:

flags   = SOF_TIMESTAMPING_RX_HARDWARE
        | SOF_TIMESTAMPING_RX_SOFTWARE
        | SOF_TIMESTAMPING_SOFTWARE;

I get proper timestamps:

HW TIMESTAMP 1551721801.970270543

However, they seem to be software-timestamping ones. What would be the correct solution / method to handle hardware timestamping for packets received?

hy1130 · Answer 1 · 2021-01-13T19:59:41.650

First of all, use ethtool -T "your NIC" to make sure your hardware supports the hardware timestamping feature.

You need to explicitly tell the Linux to enable the hardware timestamping feature of your NIC. In order to to that, you need to have a ioctl() call.

What you have to do is to call it with SIOCSHWTSTAMP, which is a device request code to indicate which device you want to handle as well as what you want to do. For example, there is a code called CDROMSTOP to stop the cdrom drive. You also need to use a ifreq struct to configure your NIC.

You need something like this:

struct ifreq ifconfig;
strncpy(config.ifr_name, "your NIC name", sizeof(ifconfig.ifr_name));
ioctl("your file descriptor" , SIOCSHWTSTAMP, &ifconfig);

Here are some pages that you can look up to: ioctl manual page, ifreq manual page, Read part 3.

Linux socket hardware timestamping

1 Answers1