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SONiC P4 Software Switch

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Yibo Zhu edited this page Mar 2, 2017 · 27 revisions

#What is SONiC-P4 Software Switch

SONiC-P4 is a software switch that runs on the P4-emulated software switch ASIC developed by Barefoot. It uses the SAI.P4 to program the P4-emulated switch ASIC to emulate the data plane behavior. On top of that, it runs the real SONiC network stack. The current SONiC-P4 is released as a docker image. You can run it anywhere that docker runs -- inside a bare-metal Linux/Windows machine, inside your favorite virtual machine, or inside your favorite cloud environment. However, because of this choice, we build the various SONiC modules in a single docker image, instead of having them as their own docker image. We find this a very useful tool for developing and testing upper layer features.

#How to use SONiC-P4 Software Switch

  1. In the following, we explain the usage of SONiC-P4 software switch with a very simple testbed.

Topology:

host1 (Ubuntu, 192.168.1.2/24) <--> switch1 (sonic) <--> switch2 (sonic) <--> host2 (Ubuntu, 192.168.2.2/24)

switch1 and switch2 are two SONiC-P4 switches in two different BGP AS, peering with each other. Test1 announces 192.168.1.0/24, switch2 announces 192.168.2.0/24

  • On a Ubuntu server, download necessary files Here. Unzip the file and go to the sonic/ directory.

  • Run ./install_docker_ovs.sh to install docker and open-vswitch.

  • Run ./load_image.sh to load the SONiC-P4 image. Currently, we specify loading build 278. You can specify other builds later than 278.

  • Run ./start.sh to setup the two switches and hosts. You should see the four dockers when finish.

lgh@acs-p4:~/sonic$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE                    COMMAND             CREATED             STATUS              PORTS
      NAMES
db924306352f        ubuntu:14.04             "/bin/bash"         2 minutes ago       Up 2 minutes
      host2
ae5e987dee8c        ubuntu:14.04             "/bin/bash"         2 minutes ago       Up 2 minutes
      host1
aed19d76cd3a        docker-sonic-p4:latest   "/bin/bash"         2 minutes ago       Up 2 minutes
      switch2
680f95a83512        docker-sonic-p4:latest   "/bin/bash"         2 minutes ago       Up 2 minutes
      switch1
  • Wait for ~30 seconds of bootup time. Then run ./test.sh, which pings host2 from host1.
lgh@acs-p4:~/sonic$ ./test.sh                 
PING 192.168.2.2 (192.168.2.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.2.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=62 time=9.81 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.2.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=62 time=14.9 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.2.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=62 time=8.42 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.2.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=62 time=14.7 ms
  • Check BGP on switch1
lgh@acs-p4:~/sonic$ docker exec -it switch1 bash
root@switch1:/# vtysh -c "show ip bgp sum"
BGP router identifier 192.168.1.1, local AS number 10001
RIB entries 3, using 336 bytes of memory
Peers 1, using 4568 bytes of memory

Neighbor        V         AS MsgRcvd MsgSent   TblVer  InQ OutQ Up/Down  State/PfxRcd
10.0.0.1        4 10002    1993    1996        0    0    0 00:33:12        1

Total number of neighbors 1
  • run ./stop.sh to cleanup.
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