[ovs-discuss] Add a new OpenFlow action and Buffer packets in switch

Ben Pfaff blp at nicira.com
Mon Oct 21 22:12:32 UTC 2013


On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 05:07:25PM -0500, Xiaoye Sun wrote:
> For my understanding, when a packet matches an entry with 'learn' action,
> the 'learn' action will insert an entry to the specified flow table, the
> match fields of the entry can be get from the matched packet and the action
> of the entry can be specified in 'learn' action. This 'learn' action might
> be a good reference for my second question.
> 
> The question about adding a new BUFFER action (1st question) and the
> question about how to buffer a packet (3rd question) are independent from
> the question about the 'learn' action (2nd question). The reason why I need
> to buffer the following packets is that I want the controller only see one
> packet (the first packet of a flow) from each flow. The following reason is
> why the controller could see multiple packets from the same flow. In the
> case that a switch receives a following packet (the following packet of a
> flow, whose first packet has already been sent to the controller via
> packet-in) before the corresponding packet-out or flow-mod message, the
> following packet will be sent to the controller, since there is still no
> matching rule in the flow table. To avoid sending multiple packets from the
> same flow to the controller, we need to buffer the following packets, and
> hence, the new action BUFFER is required to implement this function. Do you
> have any suggestion about adding a new OpenFlow action to ovs? More
> specifically, in the ovs code, where this new action (including the
> definition of the new action and the processing logic of the new action)
> should be added to?

Just "grep" for the names of existing actions and follow the examples
you find.



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