Again, the main motivation for SFC determining internally if a service chain is symmetric is to simplify the configuration for the operators. I think its best for SF providers to state if their device needs symmetric traffic or not, and SFC can use that info internally, without the operator having to know too much about the internals of the SFs.

If we call the SF attribute "symmetry" or "stateful", well that's splitting hairs. But a stateful SF doesnt always mean it needs both uplink and downlink traffic. I think calling the attribute symmetry is more explicit, as it states our intention to create a symmetric service chain. That is, it needs both uplink and downlink packets, ie symmetric packets.

I think the best solution would be to leave the symmetric field on the SFP, and to deprecate it (remove it next release) on the SFC and RSP. The SF-type symmetric field would still be used to determine chain symmetry, but the SFP symmetric flag could optionally be specified, and would override the SF-type symmetric fields.

Regards,

Brady


On 11/11/16 16:36, Tim Rozet wrote:
Right.  Thanks for correcting me Yi.  I also agree a stateful attribute on the 
SF and symmetrical attribute on the SFC is the best solution.

Tim Rozet
Red Hat SDN Team

----- Original Message -----
From: "Juan Manuel Fernandez" <[email protected]>
To: "Yi Y Yang" <[email protected]>
Cc: "Tim Rozet" <[email protected]>, [email protected]
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2016 2:11:08 AM
Subject: Re: [sfc-dev] Deprecating SFC, SFP, and RSP symmetric fields

Hi,

Just to be clear, I would not deprecate the symmetric attribute in SFC and SFP 
and would chante symmetric attribute in SF to stateful.

Best regards

El nov. 11, 2016 8:06 AM, Juan Manuel Fernandez 
<[email protected]> escribió:

hi,

I fully agree with Yi Yang. As far as I see we are mixing concepts.

Service Chains can be unidirectional or bidirectional and can also be symmetric 
or asymmetric.

On the other hand SFs can be stateless or stateful and can be transparent or 
not transparent (e.g. of non transparent an HTTP proxy).

As far as I understand from previous emails, what some of you is saying is that 
having a stateful SF (some of you call it symmetric) implies having a symmetric 
chain and in line with Yi Yang, I would say this is not right.  A stateful 
chain implies this SF will have a reverse path,  but not that the complete 
chain must be symmetric. I mean, the SF does not need the packet to traverse 
through the same SFs in both chain directions, but to get both the reply and 
the answer and in some cases even all the flows related to the same subscriber.

I agree with Yi Yang and Tim when saying it would be good having a stateful 
property in the SF to ensure there is a reverse path traversing this SF,  but 
not to ensure there is a symmetric chain, SFP or RSP.

Best regards,

Juanma

El nov. 11, 2016 2:00 AM, "Yang, Yi Y" <[email protected]<http://intel.com>> 
escribió:

I think you’re confusing the symmetry a stateful SF requires and symmetric 
chain. We can still create symmetric chains even if every SF in these chains is 
stateless. So I think Tim’s proposal is ok, you can mark a SF stateful by other 
property such as “stateful”, using “symmetric” here will make people confused. 
You can let SFC consider this when your chain includes such a stateful SF and 
create RSP. Let me make an example.



       SF1 ------------à SF2-----------------àSF3

(stateless)            (stateful)                     (stateless)



For such RSP, reverse RSP must include this SF2 because it is stateful.



    SF4------------àSF2-------------------àSF5

(stateless)       (stateful)                     (stateless)





You can refer to https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7665 and extend it if it didn’t 
consider your use case J



From: Brady Allen Johnson 
[mailto:[email protected]<http://ericsson.com>]
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2016 8:47 PM
To: Swati Deshpande <[email protected]<http://serro.com>>; Yang, Yi Y 
<[email protected]<http://intel.com>>
Cc: Diego Jesus Granados Lopez <[email protected]<http://ericsson.com>>; 
[email protected]<http://lists.opendaylight.org>; Tim Rozet 
<[email protected]<http://redhat.com>>
Subject: Re: [sfc-dev] Deprecating SFC, SFP, and RSP symmetric fields



I agree.

You have to ask the question:

     Why would a Service Chain be symmetric?

Answer:

     Because one or several Service Functions in that chain need both uplink 
and downlink packets.



So, as Swati mentioned, instead of putting the burden on the Operator to know 
about the Service Functions, configure the symmetric property on the Service 
Function, and let SFC create the reverse/symmetric Service Chain internally 
when needed.

This change simplifies the SFC configuration.

Regards,

Brady



On 10/11/16 13:34, Swati Deshpande wrote:



As an Abstract object , SF can be in symmetric SFC or asymmetric SFC.

If we think of use cases, there is one category of SFs, that can function only 
when set up in symmetric SFC, and second category of SF that can function in 
both symmetric as well as asymmetric SFC.

So the real question is  "Do we put onus on operator to know about category of 
SFs being deployed  and set up SFC accordingly? Or

do we derive symmetric nature of SFC based on category of SF being deployed in 
the chain.

If we want to make life easy for operators and also give them control, by 
default symmetric nature of SFC can be derived from SF category and additional 
control can be added on SFC to override the default behavior.





Regards,

Swati



On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 5:28 PM, Yang, Yi Y 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

But a SF can be in symmetric chain, it also can be in asymmetric chain, 
symmetric or asymmetric is for chain or path, not for SF. It is really weird a 
bit if you say a SF is symmetric or asymmetric.



From: Swati Deshpande 
[mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>]
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2016 7:45 PM
To: Diego Jesus Granados Lopez 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Cc: Yang, Yi Y <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; Brady Allen Johnson 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [sfc-dev] Deprecating SFC, SFP, and RSP symmetric fields



Agree with Diego, Symmetric nature of SFC should be determined based on type of 
 SF used in the chain.

SF types dpi, firewall , NAT, need to see both forward and reverse flows hence 
SFC built using such SFs would need to be symmetric.

If any one SF in a SFC has symmetric path requirement, RSP should be symmetric.



Regards,

Swati





On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 4:59 PM, Diego Jesus Granados Lopez 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
 wrote:

Hi,

Not really following your point on this. I think the contrary: SF having a symmetric flag makes all the 
sense, but it would be desirable that SFP don't have it. E.g. think of the header enrichment service 
function type:  it would be great if any HE vendor could specify whether his HE SF is symmetric or not 
(e.g. Ericsson sells the "Ericsson HE"; it is a transparent HE SF that don't need symmetry, 
hence it is a not-symmetric SF"; another vendor sells the "OtherVendor HE", that is a 
proxy, and defines its SF as symmetric). From the SFC operator standpoint, he simply choses a HE SF 
among all the vendors building SFs belonging to the header enrichment type and defines the path, and it 
is SFC what determines whether the symmetric RSP is needed or not depending on the SFs part of it. This 
way, we simplify operation (i.e. the operator choses a HE based on business needs, but never needs to 
think about symmetry) and prevent configuration mistakes (e.g. the operator configuring a SFP
  as not symmetric but including a SF which needed the symmetric path). I could 
think of the same reasoning being applicable for other SF types: dpi...

Best regards,
Diego

-----Original Message-----
From: 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> 
[mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>]
 On Behalf Of Yang, Yi Y
Sent: jueves, 10 de noviembre de 2016 12:06
To: Brady Allen Johnson 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [sfc-dev] Deprecating SFC, SFP, and RSP symmetric fields

I think SFP can keep it, others can remove it, it doesn't make sense for a SF 
to have a symmetric flag.

-----Original Message-----
From: 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> 
[mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>]
 On Behalf Of Brady Allen Johnson
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2016 6:42 PM
To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: [sfc-dev] Deprecating SFC, SFP, and RSP symmetric fields


Currently there is a symmetric field in the SFC, SFP, and RSP data models. I 
will deprecate these fields now in Carbon.

Instead of defining this in one of [SFC, SFP, RSP] a chain will be symmetric if 
it has an SF whose SF-type has the symmetry flag set to true. The SF-type 
symmetry field was also added in Beryllium.

It was always confusing what it meant if there is some combination of symmetric 
values for the SFC, SFP, and RSP. That is, what if SFC:symmetric is true, 
SFP:symmetric is false, and RSP:symmetric is true? Or some similar combination?

Currently, a reverse RSP is created if the SFP symmetric field is true.
This will still be the case in Carbon, but we will also check the SF-types as 
explained above. In Nitrogen, we'll remove the SFP symmetric field check.

I've already updated the SFC Carbon Release Plan to mention these deprecated 
fields.

Regards,

Brady


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