[ovs-discuss] In-band comm with OF-only Switches

[gavin_remaley at selinc.com]

Has a general strategy been established for establishing initial in-band 
communication with OF-only Switches?

Note that I have read the OVS Design document "In-Ban" discussion and 
looked at the OVS code where the default flows are established.

The default flows seem to assume a Hybrid Switch.  They use the "NORMAL" 
output port, which is not even supported by an OF-only Switch.  Some of 
the default flows seems to rely on a bit of (hybrid) Switch intelligence. 
If the NORMAL port is just replaced with LOCAL, there is still some work 
to do when sending replies... do we send them out all ports (probably not 
good), or do we implement some normal Switch capability (a departure from 
OF-only?) to decide what specific port to transmit on?

It seems like establishing comms with "dumb" OF-only Switches is a bit 
tricky and probably just not as easy as using the NORMAL port, as for 
Hybrid Switches.

Thanks.
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