As with most kernel cycles, Linux 5.10 has a plethora of networking improvements from expanded driver coverage to new core networking features and continuing to advance the likes of (e)BPF. With Linux 5.10 some of the work includes:
- Support for shipping BPF programs with the kernel and loading them early on boot via the user-mode driver mechanism. There is also now support for sleepable BPF programs and other BPF enhancements.
- The kernel will now allow more than 255 IPv4 multi-cast interfaces.
- Continued improvements to the Multi-Path TCP (MPTCP) code.
- XDP support for the Intel IGB driver.
- The Ath11k WiFi driver now supports the QCA6390 and IPQ6018 chipsets.
- Mellanox NICs can see as much as a 20% performance improvement for packets that don't require much offloads. THis optimization is allowing multiple packets to share a descriptor entry.
- A new BPF helper that can help improve TCP back-pressure and help limit stack traversal. In a test by a developer there was a TCP stream improvement from around 10 Gbps to 15 Gbps in his configuration with virtual Ethernet drivers between containers and hosts.
- Mediatek MT76 WiFi improvements .
- Broadcom 200G Ethernet support .
More details on the Linux 5.10 networking changes via this Git merge .