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titleCommon message API

Let's add an IPv4 route into freeRouter CLI

Code Block
languagebash
themeMidnight
titleroute addition via freeRouter
conf t
ipv4 route v1 1.2.3.0 255.255.255.0 4.4.4.4
...

Upon entering the ipv4 route and pressing <enter>, you'll see the following message appearing

Code Block
languagebash
themeMidnight
titlemessage API: route4_add
...
rx: ['route4_add', '1.2.3.0/24', '13063', '4.4.4.4', '1', '\n']
...

Let's delete the route via FreeRouter CLI

Code Block
languagebash
themeMidnight
titleroute deletion via freeRouter
conf t
no ipv4 route v1 1.2.3.0 255.255.255.0 4.4.4.4
...


Code Block
languagebash
themeMidnight
titlemessage API: route4_del
...
rx: ['route4_del', '1.2.3.0/24', '13063', '4.4.4.4', '1', '\n']
...


Warning
titleImportant note

In short, the message API is simply a collection of message that would trigger an entry ADD/

DEL

DELETE/MODIFY into the dataplane corresponding table.

The documentation of this message API will be documented and published soon, but for those who are curious and can't wait this documentation, you can read forwarder.py, bf_forwarder.py or p4dpdk.bin  source code

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Expand
titleDataplane addition made easy

This design is pretty unique because, if for any reason you would like to "hook" freeRouter control plane to an other dataplane such as:

  • FPGA
  • or dataplane powered by kernel bypass technique such as RDMA
  • Or other NPU based dataplane
  • etc.

This is possible !

You would "just" have to port your P4 code logic into the target dataplane and create an interface able to translate API messages from FreeRouter into understandable message from the target dataplane.

Note
titleBe cautious with the word "just"

The "just" word can be misleading. Indeed, depending on the target dataplane, it can be a huge task. With DPDK, we were luck lucky in getting enough material in order to move forward and again p4dpdk.bin was a simple trial at the very beginning. But some other dataplane can just be simply be ignored if we don't get enough material/support from NPU vendors. 


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titleYou can use your own control plane too !

One thing that we did not experiencedexperience, but this can be maybe one day a reality.

What if you have your own control plane and that you absolutely want to keep it, but would like to re-use BMv2/TOFINO or DPDK RARE dataplane ?

Well this is possible !

Long time ago I met Thomas MANGIN (yet another cool and nice French guy (smile) ) which is the author of Exa-BGP, i did not talk to him about this and I don't want to give him bad idea, but what if if he would like to hook a TOFINO P4 dataplane to exaBGP Exa-BGP ?

Well, he actually would just have to teach exaBGP to handle entry ADD/DELETE/MODIFY message according to the message API above.

I also love the work DONE at the SoNIC project level and I know that SoNIC has already a P4 dataplane called switch.p4. I doubt it will be the case one day but, what if SoNIC project wanted to re-use RARE dataplane for especially for Service Provider capability ?

OK, this sounds crazy, but the modular design we proposed here is valid and can make the RARE dataplane available for other control plane.

Of course, we strongly suggest you to stick with FreeRouter as you will just realize IMHO that in the TELCO Service Provider space there is no match. You'll have the venerable IOS-XR and JUNOS, but these are not Open Source counterparts.


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