Configuring Link Level Flow Control

Link Level Flow Control

Link-level flow control is a congestion management technique that pauses data transmission until the congestion in the system is resolved. When a receiving device becomes congested, it communicates with the transmitter by sending a PAUSE frame. When the transmitting device receives a Pause frame it stops the transmission of any further data frames for a short period of time. The link-level flow control feature applies to all the traffic on the link. The transmit and receive directions are separately configurable. By default, link-level flow control is disabled for both directions.

Guidelines and Restrictions for Link Level Flow Control

  • Link-level flow control (LLFC) is not supported on Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switches with 100G ports.

  • Ethernet interfaces do not auto-detect the link-level flow control capability. You must configure the capability explicitly.

  • Enabling link level flow control requires a part of the buffer to be reserved. This reduces the available shared buffer space.

  • Flow control is not supported on 40G ports.

  • Data Center Bridging Exchange Protocol (DCBX) is not supported.

  • Configuration time quanta of the pause frames is not supported.

  • On each Ethernet interface, the switch can enable either PFC or LLFC, but not both.


    Note

    When both PFC and LLFC are enabled, LLFC is selected.

  • Only pure CoS-based classification of traffic classes is supported.

  • Setting of pause threshold values is restricted.

  • Configuring Link Level Flow Control on the interfaces will flap the interfaces which results in a momentary traffic loss.

  • When a no-drop QoS group is configured, you must ensure that packets received on ports that do not have flow control send-on configured are not classified to a no-drop QoS group.

  • Only a no-drop QoS group is capable of generating link level pause frames.

  • Weighted Random Early Detection (WRED) should not be enabled on a no-drop class because it can cause egress queue drops.

  • It is recommended to use default buffer sizes for no-drop classes because if the buffer size is specified through CLI, it will allocate the same buffer size for all ports irrespective of the link speed, and MTU size.

  • It is recommended to change the LLFC configuration when there is no traffic, otherwise packets already in the MMU of the system may not get the expected treatment.

Information About Link Level Flow Control

Link Level Flow Control on Interfaces

When link level flow control is configured the system changes the interface state to Down if the specified interface is in UP state and then applies the flow control configuration. After the configuration is successfully applied to the interface, the system restores the interface to the UP state.

Link Level Flow Control on Ports

During a port shutdown event, the flow-control settings on an interface are retained, however no traffic is received or transmitted on the link. During a port startup event the flow-control settings are reinstated on to the hardware.

Mismatched Link Level Flow Control Configurations

The transmit and receive directions can be configured separately, and each device on the network can have a different Link Level Flow Control (LLFC) configuration. The following table describes how devices with mis-matched configurations interact.

Switch A Switch B Description

LLFC configured to receive and transmit PAUSE frames.

LLFC configured to receive PAUSE frames.

Switch A can transmit 802.3x PAUSE frames and honor 802.3x PAUSE frames. Switch B can only receive 802.3x PAUSE frames.

LLFC configured to receive and transmit PAUSE frames.

LLFC configured to transmit PAUSE frames.

Switch A can transmit 802.3x PAUSE frames and honor 802.3x PAUSE frames. Switch B can transmit 802.3x PAUSE frames but will drop all received PAUSE frames.

How to Configure Link Level Flow Control

Configuring Link Level Flow Control Receive

SUMMARY STEPS

    1.    configure terminal

    2.    interface ethernet 1/1

    3.    flowcontrol receive on

    4.    exit


DETAILED STEPS
     Command or ActionPurpose
    Step 1 configure terminal


    Example: 
    Device# configure terminal
     

    Enters global configuration mode.

     
    Step 2interface ethernet 1/1


    Example: 
    Device(config)# interface ethernet 1/1
     

    Configures an interface type and enters interface configuration mode.

     
    Step 3 flowcontrol receive on


    Example: 
    Device(config-if)# flowcontrol receive on
     

    Enables the interface to receive and process pause frames.

     
    Step 4exit


    Example: 
    Device(config-if)# exit
     

    Exits interface configuration mode.

     

    Configuring Link Level Flow Control Transmit

    To configure link-level flow control transmit on an interface, you enable flow control on the interface, configure a network-qos type QoS policy to enable a no-drop QoS group, and apply a qos type QoS policy to classify the traffic that requires no-drop behavior to the no-drop class.

    You must ensure that bandwidth is allocated for the No-Drop QoS class using a queuing policy when you define a no-drop class. For more information, see the "Configuring Type Queuing Policies" section.


    Note

    When a no-drop QoS Group is configured you must ensure that packets received on ports that do not have flow-control send-on configured, are not classified to a no-drop QoS group. This is required as any ingress port that does not have flow-control send-on configured, can not generate a link level pause frame and there is no way to request the transmitting device to stop the transmission. Therefore, if flow-control send-on is not configured on all the interfaces you should not use a system policy to classify the packets to the no-drop QoS group. Instead, you should apply an interface QoS policy to the interfaces that having flow-control send-on enabled.

    SUMMARY STEPS

      1.    configure terminal

      2.    interface ethernet 1/1

      3.    flowcontrol send on

      4.    exit


    DETAILED STEPS
       Command or ActionPurpose
      Step 1 configure terminal


      Example: 
      Device# configure terminal
       

      Enters global configuration mode.

       
      Step 2interface ethernet 1/1


      Example: 
      Device(config)# interface ethernet 1/1
       

      Configures an interface type and enters interface configuration mode.

       
      Step 3 flowcontrol send on


      Example: 
      Device(config-if)# flowcontrol transmit on
       

      Enables the interface to send pause frames to remote devices.

       
      Step 4 exit


      Example: 
      Device(config-if)# exit
       

      Exits interface configuration mode and returns to global configuration mode.

       

      Configuration Examples for Link Level Flow Control

      Example: Configuring a No-Drop Policy

      Configuring a No-Drop Policy

      The following example shows how to configure a no-drop policy and attach the policy to a session policy: 

      Device# configure terminal
Device(config)# class-map type network-qos class1
Device(config-cmap-nq)# match qos-group 1
Device(config-cmap-nq)# policy-map type network-qos my_network_policy
Device(config-pmap-nq)# class type network-qos class1
Device(config-pmap-nq-c)# pause pfc-cos 2
Device(config-pmap-nq-c)# system qos
Device(config-sys-qos)# service-policy type network-qos my_network_policy
Device# show running ipqos

      Classifying Traffic to a No-Drop Class

      The following example shows how to create a QoS policy to map all the traffic to the no-drop class: 

      Device# configure terminal
Device(config)# class-map type qos class1
Device(config-cmap-qos)# match cos 2
Device(config-cmap-qos)# policy-map type qos my_qos_policy
Device(config-pmap-qos)# class type qos class1
Device(config-pmap-c-qos)# set qos-group 1
Device(config-pmap-c-qos)# system qos
Device(config-sys-qos)# service-policy type qos input my_qos_policy

      Example: Configuring Link Level Flow Control Receive and Send

      Configuring Link Level Flow Control Receive and Send

      The following examples show how to configure Link Level Flow Control receive and send on the device:

      • When only LLFC receive is enabled, no-drop class does not need to be configured on the system network-qos. 

        Device# configure terminal
Device(config)# interface ethernet 1/1
Device(config-if)# flowcontrol receive on
Device(config-if)# exit

      • When both LLFC receive and send are enabled, no-drop class needs to be configured on the system network-qos. (Refer to the Configuring a No-Drop Policy example for information about configuring the no-drop class.) 

        Device# configure terminal
Device(config)# interface ethernet 1/1
Device(config-if)# flowcontrol receive on
Device(config-if)# flowcontrol send on
Device(config-if)# exit

      • When only LLFC send is enabled, no-drop class needs to be configured on the system network-qos. (Refer to the Configuring a No-Drop Policy example for information about configuring the no-drop class.) 

        Device# configure terminal
Device(config)# interface ethernet 1/1
Device(config-if)# flowcontrol send on
Device(config-if)# exit