On Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 12:07:54PM +0100, Matthias May wrote:
> On 15/02/2019 01:28, Ben Pfaff wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 15, 2019 at 12:27:11AM +0100, Matthias May wrote:
> >> On 14/02/2019 20:17, Ben Pfaff wrote:
> >>> On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 10:58:48AM +0100, Matthias May via dev wrote:
> >>>> There are switches which allow to transmit their BPDUs VLAN-tagged.
> >>>> With this change OVS is able to receive VLAN-tagged BPDUs, but still
> >>>> transmits its own BPDUs untagged.
> >>>> This was tested against Westermo RFI-207-F4G-T3G.
> >>>>
> >>>> Signed-off-by: Matthias May <[email protected]>
> >>>
> >>> Thanks for the patch.
> >>>
> >>> To me, it seems really odd to treat packets with and without an
> >>> arbitrary VLAN header the same way.  I could see it if the VLAN header
> >>> had VID 0 or 1 or some other specified value, but it seems unusual to
> >>> ignore it entirely.  Is this standardized or a de facto standard of some
> >>> kind?
> >>>
> >>
> >> I totally agree.
> >> To me a VLAN header has nothing lost on a BPDU of a (R)STP frame, simply
> >> because (R)STP is not per VLAN.
> >>
> >> However the fact is that there are switches which are transmitting
> >> frames on a VLAN.
> >>
> >> With this change we simply ignore the VLAN header if is present. The
> >> meaning of the BPDU doesn't cheange. The provided information still is
> >> not per VLAN and applies to all ports the same.
> >>
> >> This patch does not add the ability to transmit VLAN tagged BPDUs for
> >> the same reasoning above: RSTP/STP is not supposed to be per VLAN.
> >> I was thinking about adding to the patch that one can specify a VLAN via
> >> config and only BPDUs with the configured VLAN are accepted. I guess
> >> this is what you propose: only accept vlan tagged BPDUs on a specified 
> >> VLAN.
> >> Having such a config-parameter would also enable to transmit the BPDUs
> >> VLAN tagged. But I'm still of the opinion that this only suggests that
> >> one could have an (R)STP tree per VLAN.
> > 
> > I see we are basically in agreement, but I'd like more information, if
> > you have it.
> > 
> > Do the switches that transmit RSTP on a VLAN transmit it on a particular
> > VLAN like 0 or 1?  (Maybe they are transmitting them as priority-tagged
> > frames for some reason?)  If so, then it would be possible to accept
> > just that VLAN.
> > 
> 
> Hi Ben
> The switch I tested against has config options to specify with which VLAN the 
> BPDUs should be transmitted.
> From the tests I did, for this switch it doesn't matter if the received BPDUs 
> are tagged or not. The VLAN header is
> simply ignored.
> I have an open question with the vendor regarding this.
> 
> I did some digging on the net how other switches handle this. E.g at [1].
> From what I get, switches which allow tagged BPDUs simply ignore the header.
> 
> I started reading the 802.1d-2004 and 802.1q-2018, but so far haven't found 
> anything which specifies how this situation
> should be handled.

I guess networking doesn't always make total sense.  It's a shame.

I applied the patch to master, thanks!
_______________________________________________
dev mailing list
[email protected]
https://mail.openvswitch.org/mailman/listinfo/ovs-dev

Reply via email to