OpenFlow 1.1+ support in Open vSwitch ===================================== Open vSwitch support for OpenFlow 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 is a work in progress. This file describes the work still to be done. The Plan -------- OpenFlow version support is not a build-time option. A single build of Open vSwitch must be able to handle all supported versions of OpenFlow. Ideally, even at runtime it should be able to support all protocol versions at the same time on different OpenFlow bridges (and perhaps even on the same bridge). At the same time, it would be a shame to litter the core of the OVS code with lots of ugly code concerned with the details of various OpenFlow protocol versions. The primary approach to compatibility is to abstract most of the details of the differences from the core code, by adding a protocol layer that translates between OF1.x and a slightly higher-level abstract representation. The core of this approach is the many struct ofputil_* structures in lib/ofp-util.h. As a consequence of this approach, OVS cannot use OpenFlow protocol definitions that closely resemble those in the OpenFlow specification, because openflow.h in different versions of the OpenFlow specification defines the same identifier with different values. Instead, openflow-common.h contains definitions that are common to all the specifications and separate protocol version-specific headers contain protocol-specific definitions renamed so as not to conflict, e.g. OFPAT10_ENQUEUE and OFPAT11_ENQUEUE for the OpenFlow 1.0 and 1.1 values for OFPAT_ENQUEUE. Generally, in cases of conflict, the protocol layer will define a more abstract OFPUTIL_* or struct ofputil_*. Here are the current approaches in a few tricky areas: * Port numbering. OpenFlow 1.0 has 16-bit port numbers and later OpenFlow versions have 32-bit port numbers. For now, OVS support for later protocol versions requires all port numbers to fall into the 16-bit range, translating the reserved OFPP_* port numbers. * Actions. OpenFlow 1.0 and later versions have very different ideas of actions. OVS reconciles by translating all the versions' actions (and instructions) to and from a common internal representation. OpenFlow 1.1 ------------ The list of remaining work items for OpenFlow 1.1 is below. It is probably incomplete. * Implement Write-Actions instruction. * The new in_phy_port field in OFPT_PACKET_IN needs some kind of implementation. It has a sensible interpretation for tunnels but in general the physical port is not in the datapath for OVS so the value is not necessarily meaningful. We might have to just fix it as the same as in_port. * On OF1.1+ flow_mods, updates by MODIFY are now much better specified. Check that OVS implements the new behavior, fix it if not. * OFPT_TABLE_MOD stats. This is new in OF1.1, so we need to implement it. It should be implemented so that the default OVS behavior does not change. * MPLS. Simon Horman maintains a patch series that adds this feature. This is partially merged. * SCTP. Joe Stringer maintains a patch series that adds this feature. It has received review comments that need to be addressed before it is merged. * Match and set double-tagged VLANs (QinQ). This requires kernel work for reasonable performance. * VLANs tagged with 88a8 Ethertype. This requires kernel work for reasonable performance. * Groups. OpenFlow 1.2 ------------ OpenFlow 1.2 support requires OpenFlow 1.1 as a prerequisite, plus the following additional work. (This is based on the change log at the end of the OF1.2 spec. I didn't compare the specs carefully yet.) * Use new OpenFlow extensible error infrastructure, on OF1.2+ only, instead of the OVS-specific extension used until now. * OFPT_FLOW_MOD: * MODIFY and MODIFY_STRICT commands now never insert new flows in the table. We will still need variations that do, though, both to support older OpenFlow protocols and to get sensible behavior for the internal implementation of the NXAST_LEARN action. * New flag OFPFF_RESET_COUNTS. * New cookie field behavior. * Add ability to delete flow in all tables. * Update DESIGN to describe OF1.2 behavior also. OpenFlow 1.3 ------------ OpenFlow 1.3 support requires OpenFlow 1.2 as a prerequisite, plus the following additional work. (This is based on the change log at the end of the OF1.3 spec, reusing most of the section titles directly. I didn't compare the specs carefully yet.) * Add support for multipart requests. * Add OFPMP_TABLE_FEATURES statistics. * More flexible table miss support. * IPv6 extension header handling support. Fully implementing this requires kernel support. This likely will take some careful and probably time-consuming design work. The actual coding, once that is all done, is probably 2 or 3 days work. * Per-flow meters. Similar to IPv6 extension headers in kernel and design requirements. Might be politically difficult to add directly to the kernel module, since its functionality overlaps with tc. Ideally, therefore, we could implement these somehow with tc, but I haven't investigated whether that makes sense. * Per-connection event filtering. OF1.3 adopted Open vSwitch's existing design for this feature so implementation should be easy. * Auxiliary connections. These are optional, so a minimal implementation would not need them. An implementation in generic code might be a week's worth of work. The value of an implementation in generic code is questionable, though, since much of the benefit of axuiliary connections is supposed to be to take advantage of hardware support. (We could make the kernel module somehow send packets across the auxiliary connections directly, for some kind of "hardware" support, if we judged it useful enough.) * MPLS BoS matching. (Included in Simon's MPLS series?) * Provider Backbone Bridge tagging. I don't plan to implement this (but we'd accept an implementation). * Rework tag order. I'm not sure whether we need to do anything for this. * Duration for queue stats. (Duration for port stats is already implemented.) * On-demand flow counters. I think this might be a real optimization in some cases for the software switch. How to contribute ----------------- If you plan to contribute code for a feature, please let everyone know on ovs-dev before you start work. This will help avoid duplicating work. Please consider the following: * Testing. Please test your code. * Unit tests. Please consider writing some. The tests directory has many examples that you can use as a starting point. * ovs-ofctl. If you add a feature that is useful for some ovs-ofctl command then you should add support for it there. * Documentation. If you add a user-visible feature, then you should document it in the appropriate manpage and mention it in NEWS as well. * Coding style (see the CodingStyle file at the top of the source tree). * The patch submission guidelines (see SubmittingPatches). I recommend using "git send-email", which automatically follows a lot of those guidelines. Bug Reporting ------------- Please report problems to bugs@openvswitch.org.