Re: [patch net-next RFC 10/12] openvswitch: add support for datapath hardware offload

On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 05:19:56PM +0100, Thomas Graf wrote:

On 08/26/14 at 11:54am, Andy Gospodarek wrote:

quoted

It is easy to *say* it could be added later, but connecting to software
forwarding in the kernel outside of OVS (which is important to some)
would take significant effort since this set only connects switch
hardware to OVS.

Can you explain why that effort is more significant if a flow API
added first? I'm not saying it is easy to offload the existing
forwarding path, otherwise it would have been done already, but
I don't understand how the proposal makes this any more difficult.

Sorry if I introduced any confusion.  My intent was not to imply there
was specific increased technical effort required to implement other
software forwarding elements in hardware if a flow-based API is added
first.

quoted

It may be that all software-based forwarding is done via OVS in the
future, but it feels like we are long way from that future for those
that do not want to use an external controller.

Wait... I don't want to use OpenFlow to configure my laptop ;-)

You don't?  I do.  ;-)