[ovs-discuss] ovs-ofctl vs openflow 1.x vs ?

[Ben Pfaff]

On Sun, Oct 08, 2017 at 11:09:23PM -0300, Raymond Burkholder wrote:
> I've written some openflow controller code to submit openflow line-protocol
> based commands.
> 
> In looking at the ovs-fields document, there appears to be OVS functions
> available which are not available via openflow protocol commands.
> 
> Those extensions seem to be available in ovs-ofctl though.
> 
> Is there an API way of doing things instead of going through ovs-ofctl?  Or
> are the NXM extensions available in one of the OpenFlow versions?  For
> example, I've been programming via OF1.4.1 at this point (found at
> https://benpfaff.org/ofh/openflow-spec1.4.1.h).
> 
> From the ovs-fields document, there is NXM_NX_CONJ_ID (for conjunctive match
> fields), which shows as not being an openflow protocol based function.
> 
> IE, could flow tables be updated via JSON documents, like what is used to
> update the ovsdb?
> 
> Or am I missing something obvious?

I'm not sure what you're looking for here.  OpenFlow *is* the Open
vSwitch API.  You can use all the NXM fields through it, since NXM and
OXM are compatible (OVS introduced NXM then OpenFlow later adopted it
and renamed it OXM).

OpenFlow isn't JSON based so that won't work.