[ovs-dev] [patch net-next RFC 10/12] openvswitch: add support for datapath hardware offload

Andy Gospodarek gospo at cumulusnetworks.com
Tue Aug 26 18:41:38 UTC 2014


On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 05:19:56PM +0100, Thomas Graf wrote:
> On 08/26/14 at 11:54am, Andy Gospodarek wrote:
> > It is easy to *say* it could be added later, but connecting to software
> > forwarding in the kernel outside of OVS (which is important to some)
> > would take significant effort since this set only connects switch
> > hardware to OVS.
> 
> Can you explain why that effort is more significant if a flow API
> added first? I'm not saying it is easy to offload the existing
> forwarding path, otherwise it would have been done already, but
> I don't understand how the proposal makes this any more difficult.
Sorry if I introduced any confusion.  My intent was not to imply there
was specific increased technical effort required to implement other
software forwarding elements in hardware if a flow-based API is added
first.

> > It may be that all software-based forwarding is done via OVS in the
> > future, but it feels like we are long way from that future for those
> > that do not want to use an external controller.
> 
> Wait... I don't want to use OpenFlow to configure my laptop ;-)
You don't?  I do.  ;-)




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