[Xorp-hackers] XORP and/or Click with an overlay protocol

[Victor Faion]

On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 18:46, Pavlin Radoslavov <pavlin at icsi.berkeley.edu>wrote:

> Victor Faion <vfaion at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > I wanted to use my forwarding engine (which has its own forwarding table)
> > together with my own protocol (at the application layer, using sockets)
> with
> > XORP. I wasn't sure if it's better to implement a separate process that
> > interacts with XORP's FEA (this would be the forwarding engine) and
> another
> > process that represents the protocol or if I should implement all of this
> > using Click and then plug it into XORP (or just use it only with Click).
> In
> > other words, how much of XORP's code I would need to change to do this
> and
> > would it be easier to do it in Click or to use both?
>
> Without additional info about your protocol it is difficult to give
> you advice that will fit best your specific needs.
>
> If I make the assumption that your control protocol is similar to, say,
> OSPF or RIP, my generalized advice would be to implement your
> control protocol as a separate process that interacts with the XORP
> FEA. If you don't have any specific requirements, you shouldn't need
> any additional changes to XORP.
>
>
> Re. your question of XORP vs. Click.
> From XORP's perspective, Click is an IPv4/IPv6 data plane,
> though Click itself is much more than that.
> Hence, if you implement your protocol in XORP, the "shall I use
> XORP+Click" question becomes a question of whether you want to use
> Click as the IPv4/IPv6 data plane.
> On the other hand, if you have a relatively simple protocol with
> some unusual requirements (say, it requires tight integration with
> the data plane), and the existing UNIX kernel API is not sufficient,
> you might be able to save time getting the initial prototype working
> if you use only Click.
>
> Hope that helps,
> Pavlin
>
>
>
> > Victor
> > _______________________________________________
> > Xorp-hackers mailing list
> > Xorp-hackers at icir.org
> > http://mailman.ICSI.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/xorp-hackers
>



Hello,

Thank you for the response, the control protocol is a link-state routing
protocol. It uses LSR but also needs to associate additional information
with hosts and this is why I think I might need to make another XORP process
for this protocol, and I think its easier to plug in a new protocol into
XORP rather than Click.

As for using Click as the data plane, I could make my forwarding table as a
Click element, or would it be simpler to do it as a separate XORP process
without relying on Click?

Victor
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ICSI.Berkeley.EDU/pipermail/xorp-hackers/attachments/20081203/938d63d9/attachment.html