OF-CONFIG User Guide¶

Overview¶

OF-CONFIG defines an OpenFlow switch as an abstraction called an OpenFlow Logical Switch. The OF-CONFIG protocol enables configuration of essential artifacts of an OpenFlow Logical Switch so that an OpenFlow controller can communicate and control the OpenFlow Logical switch via the OpenFlow protocol. OF-CONFIG introduces an operating context for one or more OpenFlow data paths called an OpenFlow Capable Switch for one or more switches. An OpenFlow Capable Switch is intended to be equivalent to an actual physical or virtual network element (e.g. an Ethernet switch) which is hosting one or more OpenFlow data paths by partitioning a set of OpenFlow related resources such as ports and queues among the hosted OpenFlow data paths. The OF-CONFIG protocol enables dynamic association of the OpenFlow related resources of an OpenFlow Capable Switch with specific OpenFlow Logical Switches which are being hosted on the OpenFlow Capable Switch. OF-CONFIG does not specify or report how the partitioning of resources on an OpenFlow Capable Switch is achieved. OF-CONFIG assumes that resources such as ports and queues are partitioned amongst multiple OpenFlow Logical Switches such that each OpenFlow Logical Switch can assume full control over the resources that is assigned to it.

How to start¶

• start OF-CONFIG feature as below:

  feature:install odl-of-config-all
  

Configuration on the OVS supporting OF-CONFIG¶

The introduction of configuring the OVS can be referred to:

https://github.com/openvswitch/of-config.

Connection Establishment between the Capable/Logical Switch and OF-CONFIG¶

The OF-CONFIG protocol is based on NETCONF. So the switches supporting OF-CONFIG can also access OpenDaylight using the functions provided by NETCONF. This is the preparation step before connecting to OF-CONFIG. How to access the switch to OpenDaylight using the NETCONF can be referred to the NETCONF Southbound User Guide or NETCONF Southbound examples on the wiki.

Now the switches supporting OF-CONFIG and they have connected to the controller using NETCONF as described in preparation phase. OF-CONFIG can check whether the switch can support OF-CONFIG by reading the capability list in NETCONF.

The OF-CONFIG will get the information of the capable switch and logical switch via the NETCONF connection, and creates separate topologies for the capable and logical switches in the OpenDaylight Topology module.

The Connection between the capable/logical switches and OF-CONFIG is finished.

Configuration On Capable Switch¶

Here is an example showing how to make the configuration to modify-controller-connection on the capable switch using OF-CONFIG. Other configurations can follow the same way of the example.

• Example: modify-controller-connection