Will bmv2 support netconf ?

[dingrui37]

Hi @antoninbas and all , I want to ask a question, will bmv2 support netconf? According to the description in http://p4.org/api/announcing-p4runtime-a-contribution-by-the-p4-api-working-group/ , runtime management of a P4 pipeline is not enough. Switch configuration, including port management and traffic manager configuration, should also be in scope of the P4 API Working Group. One way to achieve it is to define OpenConfig data models in YANG format, so if bmv2 support netconf, it is convenient to manage bmv2 for simulation, is there any plan?

[antoninbas]

There is indeed a plan to support some specific OpenConfig data models with bmv2. However, the P4 API Working Group's initial plan is to support them using gNMI (https://github.com/openconfig/reference/tree/master/rpc/gnmi) and not with netconf as the transport. gNMI is more aligned with our initial implementation of P4Runtime, which uses protobuf & gRPC. Not to say that the Working Group is tied to these specific tools, but the first interface definition & implementation we deliver will use them.

[dingrui37]

Thanks @antoninbas. Our company have 2 tofino switches, the leaders plan to make a POC based on switch.p4(L2 and L3), but we don't know how to manage swtiches, including devices discovery, devices configuration and resource management and so on. There is a lack of standards for management-plane. We think tofino switch in essentially is still a switch, traditional management protocols, like netconf, can still be used for management them(OpenConfig data models + netconf + runtime API). What's your opinion? And I also want to ask about the progress of the gNMI.

[cc10512]

@dingrui37 this is not the right forum to discuss Tofino support. Please reach out to your customer engineering representative and they will provide you with the answers.

[dingrui37]

@cc10512 First, do you think customer engineer can provide reasonable advice? Second, my question was focused on management-plane, not tofino itself.

[antoninbas]

This is not an appropriate place to discuss Tofino and this is even less of an appropriate place to discuss Barefoot Networks customer engineering. Your question is indeed focused on Tofino IMO. Please do contact customer engineering if you have questions about Tofino switch management. Even if I do give you a timeline for gNMI support on bmv2, that would be pretty much irrelevant to Tofino, as the 2 implementations are separate projects.

[antoninbas]

BTW, no one is saying your original question about bmv2 netconf support was inappropriate, but your follow-up question doesn't belong here.