[ovs-discuss] OpenVSwitch looped topology without bonds/STP

[Colton Powell]

Hi all,

I know that this could be just as easily asked on an OpenDaylight mailing
list, but it specifically involves OpenVSwitch and was hoping someone here
might be able to provide some insight.

In short, I wish to have a OpenVSwitch topology which is looped, and want
to use OpenDaylight to later install flows into the OpenVSwitches to
program paths throughout the network.

By default, having a looped topology causes issues with broadcast packets
(such as ARP packets) being looped. I have read the Common Configuration
Problems page, which says to use bonds or STP to solve this issue.

However, bonds do not satisfy the requirements I wish to meet, and STP
causes problems with OpenDaylight. When STP is enabled on the switches,
OpenDaylight fails to detect all links in the topology. In particular, only
the links along the spanning tree are detected, and any links that would
otherwise cause a cycle are not detected. This makes it impossible to
gather a complete view of the topology from the controller, meaning I
cannot consider all paths throughout the network before installing flows
onto the switches.

I have found some hacky workarounds for this, but they are definitely not
ideal. Would anyone here have any insight as to how I can correctly
configure my OpenVSwitches in a looped topology without using bonds or STP?
Or is there perhaps another solution that I am not seeing?

Any help/insight would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,

Colton
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.openvswitch.org/pipermail/ovs-discuss/attachments/20190327/d9f33ece/attachment.html>