VPP again

[DanPartelly]

Pim van Pelt added with Roman's help VPP to containerlab, a couple of months ago. The container is better than the one I used last year for the initial VPP experiments. It uses the same host interfaces I used in my experiments (no dpdk), but has proper Linux CP integration and support for both FRR and Bird inside the container.

Routing works, at least the feeble experiments I did with FRR worked. Perhapes this brings us a step closer to have a proper integration one day in Netlab. (although each device added is a burden in testing and it only goes up)

[ipspace]

Of course we can add it to netlab -- IIRC I asked Pim to ping me when he got the control plane working; looks like he forgot.

Would you like me to do the device creation etc?

[DanPartelly]

We have that branch last you made the initial device, I used that, added some env vars ( to chose routing demon) and I had the image up. Look at it if you want, if only to provide some initial thoughts and guidance.

• Pim's implementation relays on vppcfg to configure VPP and LCP from where the init script let's go. (his utility)
• container initialization script only creates the interfaces in the dataplane
• vppcfg create mirror interfaces in the controlplane , ip adresses and so on. with no vppcfg.yaml bind mounted by clab, there are no LCP interfaces (need to look at suitability of vppcfg at least for container initialization
• we might need flags per interface to specify whatever to create shadow LCP interface or not
• dataplane runs into a linux network namespace called "dataplane"
• routing demons should bind the interfaces from this namespace (his scripts do that, but we might need to mount bind FRR demon config as well so we can enable demons per netlab module active and enable demons like is-is , which, IIRC he doesn't have enabled. Same story for Bird
• if you want to ping from vtysh for example when you work, you should start vtysh in the dataplane namespace.
• container will need dual ansible scripts, handling control plane tools (vtysh ...) and vppctl for dataplane configuration
• dataplane configs are mostly undocumented, Ive extracted some commands I played with, one by one, Ill post them for reference (there are hundreds other).

[DanPartelly]

Another item to add. Linux control plane plugin for VPP doesn't support ISIS. So now I know why Pim doesnt enable isisd daemon.

There are some patches here: and judging from this: @pimvanpelt doesnt oppose merging them into his plugin.

This should be another item to try to get moving again. Ill contact people after we get VPP in netlab.