ONF Connect 2018

Trellis is a multi-purpose, resilient, leaf-spine networking fabric built on white-boxes. Over the past year, we have added support for P4-capable silicon via an open-source P4 program called “fabric.p4”. By using P4, we were able to demonstrate value-added features that go beyond basic packet forwarding, such as VNF offloading and per-packet visibility using INT. Indeed, fabric.p4 has been designed with extensibility in mind, allowing anyone to add more data plane functions based on different use cases, while using the same Trellis apps on ONOS to provide resilient forwarding across the fabric.

This tutorial will be divided into two parts. In the first part, we will cover the basics of Trellis and the design of fabric.p4, focusing on the extensibility features, with examples of how we integrated support for functions such as GTP tunnel termination. The second part will include a hands-on activity where attendees will learn how to i) use Trellis with a Mininet network of BMv2 software switches, ii) extend fabric.p4 with additional functions, and iii) write ONOS application to control the added functionality.