about hidden flows.)
- The Open vSwitch software switch implementation uses a second
- kind of flow internally. These flows, called "exact-match"
- or "datapath" or "kernel" flows, do not support wildcards or
- priorities and comprise only a single table, which makes them
- suitable for caching. OpenFlow flows and exact-match flows
+ kind of flow internally. These flows, called "datapath" or
+ "kernel" flows, do not support priorities and comprise only a
+ single table, which makes them suitable for caching. (Like
+ OpenFlow flows, datapath flows do support wildcarding, in Open
+ vSwitch 1.11 and later.) OpenFlow flows and datapath flows
also support different actions and number ports differently.
- Exact-match flows are an implementation detail that is
- subject to change in future versions of Open vSwitch. Even
- with the current version of Open vSwitch, hardware switch
- implementations do not necessarily use exact-match flows.
+ Datapath flows are an implementation detail that is subject to
+ change in future versions of Open vSwitch. Even with the
+ current version of Open vSwitch, hardware switch
+ implementations do not necessarily use this architecture.
Each of the commands for dumping flows has a different purpose:
including hidden flows. This is occasionally useful for
troubleshooting suspected issues with in-band control.
- - "ovs-dpctl dump-flows [dp]" dumps the exact-match flow table
+ - "ovs-dpctl dump-flows [dp]" dumps the datapath flow table
entries for a Linux kernel-based datapath. In Open vSwitch
1.10 and later, ovs-vswitchd merges multiple switches into a
single datapath, so it will show all the flows on all your
useful for debugging.
- "ovs-appctl dpif/dump-flows <br>", new in Open vSwitch 1.10,
- dumps exact-match flows for only the specified bridge,
- regardless of the type.
+ dumps datapath flows for only the specified bridge, regardless
+ of the type.
Performance