TODO

-*- outline -*-

* L3 support

** New OVN logical actions

*** icmp4 { action... }

Generates an ICMPv4 packet based on the current IPv4 packet and
processes it according to each nested action (and then pops back to
processing the original IPv4 packet).  The intended use case is for
generating "time exceeded" and "destination unreachable" errors.

ovn-sb.xml includes a tentative specification for this action.

Tentatively, the icmp4 action sets a default icmp_type and icmp_code
and lets the nested actions override it.  This means that we'd have to
make icmp_type and icmp_code writable.  Because changing icmp_type and
icmp_code can change the interpretation of the rest of the data in the
ICMP packet, we would want to think this through carefully.  If it
seems like a bad idea then we could instead make the type and code a
parameter to the action: icmp4(type, code) { action... }

It is worth considering what should be considered the ingress port for
the ICMPv4 packet.  It's quite likely that the ICMPv4 packet is going
to go back out the ingress port.  Maybe the icmp4 action, therefore,
should clear the inport, so that output to the original inport won't
be discarded.

*** tcp_reset

Transforms the current TCP packet into a RST reply.

ovn-sb.xml includes a tentative specification for this action.

*** Other actions for IPv6.

IPv6 will probably need an action or actions for ND that is similar to
the "arp" action, and an action for generating

*** ct_label 128-bit support.

We only support 64-bits for the ct_label argument to ct_commit(), but ct_label
is a 128-bit field.  The OVN lexer only supports parsing 64-bit integers, but
we can use parse_int_string() to support larger integers.

** IPv6

*** ND versus ARP

*** IPv6 routing

*** ICMPv6

** Dynamic IP to MAC bindings

OVN has basic support for establishing IP to MAC bindings dynamically,
using ARP.

*** Ratelimiting.

From casual observation, Linux appears to generate at most one ARP per
second per destination.

This might be supported by adding a new OVN logical action for
rate-limiting.

*** Tracking queries

It's probably best to only record in the database responses to queries
actually issued by an L3 logical router, so somehow they have to be
tracked, probably by putting a tentative binding without a MAC address
into the database.

*** Renewal and expiration.

Something needs to make sure that bindings remain valid and expire
those that become stale.

One way to do this might be to add some support for time to the
database server itself.

*** Table size limiting.

The table of MAC bindings must not be allowed to grow unreasonably
large.

** MTU handling (fragmentation on output)

* ovn-controller

** ovn-controller parameters and configuration.

*** SSL configuration.

    Can probably get this from Open_vSwitch database.

** Security

*** Limiting the impact of a compromised chassis.

    Every instance of ovn-controller has the same full access to the central
    OVN_Southbound database.  This means that a compromised chassis can
    interfere with the normal operation of the rest of the deployment.  Some
    specific examples include writing to the logical flow table to alter
    traffic handling or updating the port binding table to claim ports that are
    actually present on a different chassis.  In practice, the compromised host
    would be fighting against ovn-northd and other instances of ovn-controller
    that would be trying to restore the correct state.  The impact could include
    at least temporarily redirecting traffic (so the compromised host could
    receive traffic that it shouldn't) and potentially a more general denial of
    service.

    There are different potential improvements to this area.  The first would be
    to add some sort of ACL scheme to ovsdb-server.  A proposal for this should
    first include an ACL scheme for ovn-controller.  An example policy would
    be to make Logical_Flow read-only.  Table-level control is needed, but is
    not enough.  For example, ovn-controller must be able to update the Chassis
    and Encap tables, but should only be able to modify the rows associated with
    that chassis and no others.

    A more complex example is the Port_Binding table.  Currently, ovn-controller
    is the source of truth of where a port is located.  There seems to be  no
    policy that can prevent malicious behavior of a compromised host with this
    table.

    An alternative scheme for port bindings would be to provide an optional mode
    where an external entity controls port bindings and make them read-only to
    ovn-controller.  This is actually how OpenStack works today, for example.
    The part of OpenStack that manages VMs (Nova) tells the networking component
    (Neutron) where a port will be located, as opposed to the networking
    component discovering it.

** Gratuitous ARP generation

   ovn-controller should generate a GARP when a port is bound to a chassis.
   This is needed when ports are migrated from one chassis to another, such
   as live migrating a VM.

* ovsdb-server

  ovsdb-server should have adequate features for OVN but it probably
  needs work for scale and possibly for availability as deployments
  grow.  Here are some thoughts.

  Andy Zhou is looking at these issues.

*** Reducing amount of data sent to clients.

    Currently, whenever a row monitored by a client changes,
    ovsdb-server sends the client every monitored column in the row,
    even if only one column changes.  It might be valuable to reduce
    this only to the columns that changes.

    Also, whenever a column changes, ovsdb-server sends the entire
    contents of the column.  It might be valuable, for columns that
    are sets or maps, to send only added or removed values or
    key-values pairs.

    Currently, clients monitor the entire contents of a table.  It
    might make sense to allow clients to monitor only rows that
    satisfy specific criteria, e.g. to allow an ovn-controller to
    receive only Logical_Flow rows for logical networks on its hypervisor.

*** Reducing redundant data and code within ovsdb-server.

    Currently, ovsdb-server separately composes database update
    information to send to each of its clients.  This is fine for a
    small number of clients, but it wastes time and memory when
    hundreds of clients all want the same updates (as will be in the
    case in OVN).

    (This is somewhat opposed to the idea of letting a client monitor
    only some rows in a table, since that would increase the diversity
    among clients.)

*** Multithreading.

    If it turns out that other changes don't let ovsdb-server scale
    adequately, we can multithread ovsdb-server.  Initially one might
    only break protocol handling into separate threads, leaving the
    actual database work serialized through a lock.

** Increasing availability.

   Database availability might become an issue.  The OVN system
   shouldn't grind to a halt if the database becomes unavailable, but
   it would become impossible to bring VIFs up or down, etc.

   My current thought on how to increase availability is to add
   clustering to ovsdb-server, probably via the Raft consensus
   algorithm.  As an experiment, I wrote an implementation of Raft
   for Open vSwitch that you can clone from:

       https://github.com/blp/ovs-reviews.git raft

** Reducing startup time.

   As-is, if ovsdb-server restarts, every client will fetch a fresh
   copy of the part of the database that it cares about.  With
   hundreds of clients, this could cause heavy CPU load on
   ovsdb-server and use excessive network bandwidth.  It would be
   better to allow incremental updates even across connection loss.
   One way might be to use "Difference Digests" as described in
   Epstein et al., "What's the Difference? Efficient Set
   Reconciliation Without Prior Context".  (I'm not yet aware of
   previous non-academic use of this technique.)

** Support multiple tunnel encapsulations in Chassis.

   So far, both ovn-controller and ovn-controller-vtep only allow
   chassis to have one tunnel encapsulation entry.  We should extend
   the implementation to support multiple tunnel encapsulations.

** Update learned MAC addresses from VTEP to OVN

   The VTEP gateway stores all MAC addresses learned from its
   physical interfaces in the 'Ucast_Macs_Local' and the
   'Mcast_Macs_Local' tables.  ovn-controller-vtep should be
   able to update that information back to ovn-sb database,
   so that other chassis know where to send packets destined
   to the extended external network instead of broadcasting.

** Translate ovn-sb Multicast_Group table into VTEP config

   The ovn-controller-vtep daemon should be able to translate
   the Multicast_Group table entry in ovn-sb database into
   Mcast_Macs_Remote table configuration in VTEP database.

* Consider the use of BFD as tunnel monitor.

  The use of BFD for hypervisor-to-hypervisor tunnels is probably not worth it,
  since there's no alternative to switch to if a tunnel goes down.  It could
  make sense at a slow rate if someone does OVN monitoring system integration,
  but not otherwise.

  When OVN gets to supporting HA for gateways (see ovn/OVN-GW-HA.md), BFD is
  likely needed as a part of that solution.

  There's more commentary in this ML post:
  http://openvswitch.org/pipermail/dev/2015-November/062385.html

* ACL

** Support FTP ALGs.

** Support reject action.

** Support log option.