Packet sockets can be used to configure physical-layer multicasting and promiscuous mode. PACKET_ADD_MEMBERSHIP adds a binding and PACKET_DROP_MEMBERSHIP drops it. They both expect a packet_mreq structure as argument:

mr_ifindex contains the interface index for the interface whose status should be changed. The mr_type field specifies which action to perform. PACKET_MR_PROMISC enables receiving all packets on a shared medium (often known as "promiscuous mode"), PACKET_MR_MULTICAST binds the socket to the physical-layer multicast group specified in mr_address and mr_alen, and PACKET_MR_ALLMULTI sets the socket up to receive all multicast packets arriving at the interface.

In addition, the traditional ioctls SIOCSIFFLAGS, SIOCADDMULTI, SIOCDELMULTI can be used for the same purpose.

If this binary option is enabled, the packet socket passes a metadata structure along with each packet in the recvmsg(2) control field. The structure can be read with cmsg(3). It is defined as

To scale processing across threads, packet sockets can form a fanout group. In this mode, each matching packet is enqueued onto only one socket in the group. A socket joins a fanout group by calling setsockopt(2) with level SOL_PACKET and option PACKET_FANOUT. Each network namespace can have up to 65536 independent groups. A socket selects a group by encoding the ID in the first 16 bits of the integer option value. The first packet socket to join a group implicitly creates it. To successfully join an existing group, subsequent packet sockets must have the same protocol, device settings, fanout mode and flags (see below). Packet sockets can leave a fanout group only by closing the socket. The group is deleted when the last socket is closed.

Fanout supports multiple algorithms to spread traffic between sockets, as follows:

Fanout modes can take additional options. IP fragmentation causes packets from the same flow to have different flow hashes. The flag PACKET_FANOUT_FLAG_DEFRAG, if set, causes packets to be defragmented before fanout is applied, to preserve order even in this case. Fanout mode and options are communicated in the second 16 bits of the integer option value. The flag PACKET_FANOUT_FLAG_ROLLOVER enables the roll over mechanism as a backup strategy: if the original fanout algorithm selects a backlogged socket, the packet rolls over to the next available one.

When a malformed packet is encountered on a transmit ring, the default is to reset its tp_status to TP_STATUS_WRONG_FORMAT and abort the transmission immediately. The malformed packet blocks itself and subsequently enqueued packets from being sent. The format error must be fixed, the associated tp_status reset to TP_STATUS_SEND_REQUEST, and the transmission process restarted via send(2). However, if PACKET_LOSS is set, any malformed packet will be skipped, its tp_status reset to TP_STATUS_AVAILABLE, and the transmission process continued.

By default, a packet receive ring writes packets immediately following the metadata structure and alignment padding. This integer option reserves additional headroom.

Create a memory-mapped ring buffer for asynchronous packet reception. The packet socket reserves a contiguous region of application address space, lays it out into an array of packet slots and copies packets (up to tp_snaplen) into subsequent slots. Each packet is preceded by a metadata structure similar to tpacket_auxdata. The protocol fields encode the offset to the data from the start of the metadata header. tp_net stores the offset to the network layer. If the packet socket is of type SOCK_DGRAM, then tp_mac is the same. If it is of type SOCK_RAW, then that field stores the offset to the link-layer frame. Packet socket and application communicate the head and tail of the ring through the tp_status field. The packet socket owns all slots with tp_status equal to TP_STATUS_KERNEL. After filling a slot, it changes the status of the slot to transfer ownership to the application. During normal operation, the new tp_status value has at least the TP_STATUS_USER bit set to signal that a received packet has been stored. When the application has finished processing a packet, it transfers ownership of the slot back to the socket by setting tp_status equal to TP_STATUS_KERNEL.

Packet sockets implement multiple variants of the packet ring. The implementation details are described in Documentation/networking/packet_mmap.txt in the Linux kernel source tree.

Retrieve packet socket statistics in the form of a structure

Receiving statistics resets the internal counters. The statistics structure differs when using a ring of variant TPACKET_V3.

The packet receive ring always stores a timestamp in the metadata header. By default, this is a software generated timestamp generated when the packet is copied into the ring. This integer option selects the type of timestamp. Besides the default, it support the two hardware formats described in Documentation/networking/timestamping.txt in the Linux kernel source tree.

Create a memory-mapped ring buffer for packet transmission. This option is similar to PACKET_RX_RING and takes the same arguments. The application writes packets into slots with tp_status equal to TP_STATUS_AVAILABLE and schedules them for transmission by changing tp_status to TP_STATUS_SEND_REQUEST. When packets are ready to be transmitted, the application calls send(2) or a variant thereof. The buf and len fields of this call are ignored. If an address is passed using sendto(2) or sendmsg(2), then that overrides the socket default. On successful transmission, the socket resets tp_status to TP_STATUS_AVAILABLE. It immediately aborts the transmission on error unless PACKET_LOSS is set.

By default, PACKET_RX_RING creates a packet receive ring of variant TPACKET_V1. To create another variant, configure the desired variant by setting this integer option before creating the ring.

By default, packets sent through packet sockets pass through the kernel's qdisc (traffic control) layer, which is fine for the vast majority of use cases. For traffic generator appliances using packet sockets that intend to brute-force flood the network—for example, to test devices under load in a similar fashion to pktgen—this layer can be bypassed by setting this integer option to 1. A side effect is that packet buffering in the qdisc layer is avoided, which will lead to increased drops when network device transmit queues are busy; therefore, use at your own risk.