[Xorp-hackers] VLANs

[Kristian Larsson]

On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 11:32:47AM -0700, Pavlin Radoslavov wrote:
> Kristian Larsson <kristian at spritelink.se> wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 12:58:20AM -0700, Pavlin Radoslavov wrote:
> > > > Vyatta have had working VLAN support for some time
> > > > now. Is there anyone having any objections
> > > > backporting this into XORP?
> > > > I know the support is only for Linux, but by
> > > > starting with the Vyatta code we can work our way
> > > > from there.
> > > 
> > > In general, we would like to port-back (as time allows us) many of
> > > the good things the Vyatta folks have added to their code.
How far should XORP go, I'm thinking about the
vrrpd daemon... is this something that can be
integrated into XORP or is that off limits?

> > > However, in case of VLAN specifically, the Vyatta solution won't
> > > work for us, because it is not portable. E.g., the interfaces.tp
> > > rtrmgr template file contains the following %create commands which
> > > deal with creating VLAN vifs:
> > > 
> 
> <DEL>
> 
> > >         %create:  program "vconfig add $(ethernet.@) $(@)";
> > This is certainly not an elegant solution.
> > However there is no problem doing this from within
> > the fea. I've provided a very simple code example
> > of adding vlans on a Linux system, it's available
> > at
> > http://www.xorp.org/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=79&action=view
> 
> Yes, we want to do use such system calls in the FEA to manage the
> VLANs. The "non-trivial" part is that we need to investigate how it
> is done for different OS-es, provide the mechanisms to read vlan
> info, etc. There are no big issues in doing this, it is primarily a
> question of finding the time to design and implementing it carefully
> to cover various details.
I see.

Keeping it compatible with Linux and *BSD is
probably something quite trivial but with Windows or
something else I can imagine it's a whole
different story.

What I want is to start off somewhere. Right now,
this seems like some holy grail that noone dare
touch. By implementing most of the Vyatta work,
ofcourse with some exceptions, I think we would
have a good starting point.

The vif syntax would probably have to change, I
find the Vyatta way of doing it quite natural.
Does anyone have any objections against it?

  Kristian.