Tying it all together Linux networking, virtualization, and IEEE standards

John Fastabend (<email address hidden>)

The Linux 3.3 kernel released with no less than three separate
networking bridges, at least four network drivers supporting
SR-IOV, and numerous interfaces to manage these devices. Meanwhile
the IEEE Data Center Bridging (DCB) Task Group[1] is nearly
complete with work on two standards to help configure end stations
in virtual environments namely 802.1Qbg and 802.1Qbh. Additionally,
software defined networking (SDN) becomes an increasingly popular
buzzword and the openflow standard[2] provides a mechanism to
support many of the common SDN features. As the networking landscape
changes the Linux plumbing has to evolve with it.

This presentation will highlight the Linux interfaces that support
bridging as well as review the standards currently being developed.
We will discuss how software is using these interfaces today and
explore how the management plane can be improved to better use existing
and future hardware features. Much of this work is already underway
with KVM supporting early draft versions of the 802.1Qbg specification
and many hardware devices supporting L2 forwarding, ACLs, and similar
bridging features. In this talk we hope to provide a succinct description
of the ongoing work and shortcomings in Linux bridging and virtualization
as well as provide a brief overview of how Linux is aligning to community
standards.

[1] http://www.ieee802.org/1/pages/dcbridges.html
[2] http://www.openflow.org

Required attendees: (suggested)

Vivek Kashyap - IBM/KVM/802.1Qbg
Stephen Hemminger - Linux Bridge
Jesse Gross - open-vswitch and openflow

Bio:

John Fastabend is a software engineer working for Intel's LAN Access
Division. He maintains numerous Linux daemons namely 'lldpad' a link
layer discovery protocol (LLDP) daemon and 'cgdcbxd' a daemon to
monitor and configure the net_prio control groups. He is also an
active kernel contributor working on among other things, DCB, queueing
disciplines and managing hardware offload support for bridging.