[ovs-dev] [patch_v4] ovn: Add additional comments regarding arp responders.

Han Zhou zhouhan at gmail.com
Sat Oct 8 00:25:02 UTC 2016


Overall it looks good to me. Just suggestions for rewording.

On Thu, Oct 6, 2016 at 10:34 AM, Darrell Ball <dlu998 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There has been enough confusion regarding logical switch datapath
> arp responders in ovn to warrant some additional comments;
> hence add a general description regarding why they exist and
> document the special cases.
>
> Signed-off-by: Darrell Ball <dlu998 at gmail.com>
> ---
>
> Note this patch is meant to be merge with the code change for vtep
> inport handling here.
> https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/675796/
>
> v3->v4: Capitalization fixes.
>         Reinstate comment regarding L2 learning confusion.
>
> v2->v3: Reword and further elaborate.
>
> v1->v2: Dropped RFC code change for logical switch router
>         type ports
>
>  ovn/northd/ovn-northd.8.xml | 52 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++------
>  1 file changed, 46 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/ovn/northd/ovn-northd.8.xml b/ovn/northd/ovn-northd.8.xml
> index 77eb3d1..5ac351d 100644
> --- a/ovn/northd/ovn-northd.8.xml
> +++ b/ovn/northd/ovn-northd.8.xml
> @@ -415,20 +415,60 @@
>      <h3>Ingress Table 9: ARP/ND responder</h3>
>
>      <p>
> -      This table implements ARP/ND responder for known IPs.

To avoid confusing with lrouter ARP responder, it is better to be: this
table implements ARP/ND responder in *logical switch*, for known IPs.

> +      ARP requests received by multiple hypervisors, as in the case of
> +      <code>localnet</code> and <code>vtep</code> logical inports need
> +      to skip these logical switch ARP responders;  the reason being
> +      that northd downloads the same mac binding rules to all hypervisors
> +      and all hypervisors will receive the ARP request from the external
> +      network and respond.  This will confuse L2 learning on the source
> +      of the ARP requests.  These skip rules are mentioned under
> +      priority-100 flows.

Suggest to avoid this detail here, but just describe in the priority-100
flow section. Too much details here adds redundancy and not helpful to
overall understanding. For example, there is also another case to skip
which is when IP is owned by the inport, and it is described separately
already.

> +                                   ARP requests arrive from VMs with a
logical
> +      switch inport type of type empty, which is the default.  For this
> +      case,

This part of text is correct, but I feel it doesn't help understanding but
add confusion, so suggest to remove.

> +               If this logical switch router type port does not have an
> +      IP address configured, ARP requests will hit another ARP responder
> +      on the logical router datapath itself, which is most commonly a
> +      distributed logical router.  The advantage of using the logical
> +      switch proxy ARP rule for logical router ports is that this rule
> +      is hit before the logical switch L2 broadcast rule.  This means
> +      the ARP request is not broadcast on this logical switch.

How about:

If this logical switch router type port does not have an IP address
configured, although the request will still be responded by the ARP
responder on the logical router datapath, the ARP request will be broadcast
on the logical switch.

> +                                             Note that ARP requests
received from
> +      <code>localnet</code> or <code>vtep</code> logical inports can
> +      either go directly to VMs, in which case the VM responds or can
> +      hit an ARP responder for a logical router port if the packet is
> +      used to resolve a logical router port next hop address.

This part of text is somehow redundant with the above. If this is to be
emphasised, we may put it under the section for router ARP responder flows
description, to explain why we still need ARP responder for on router
datapath.

> +                                                                 The
inport being of type
> +        <code>router</code> has no known use case for these ARP
> +        responders.  However, no skip flows are installed for these
> +        packets, as there would be some additional flow cost for this
> +        and the value appears limited.

Maybe we don't even need to mention this if we don't want to skip this kind
of packet. If there is no such case, it means we don't need to add flows to
skip it; if there is such case, but we want the ARP responder to work for
that case, we don't need to a flows to skip either.


Acked-by: Han Zhou <zhouhan at gmail.com>



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