Ovs

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- Dropped support for Python older than version 2.7. As a consequence,
using Open vSwitch 2.5 or later on XenServer 6.5 or earlier (which
have Python 2.4) requires first installing Python 2.7.
- OpenFlow:
* Group chaining (where one OpenFlow group triggers another) is
now supported.
* OpenFlow 1.4+ "importance" is now considered for flow eviction.
* OpenFlow 1.4+ OFPTC_EVICTION is now implemented.
* OpenFlow 1.4+ OFPTC_VACANCY_EVENTS is now implemented.
* OpenFlow 1.4+ OFPMP_TABLE_DESC is now implemented.
* Allow modifying the ICMPv4/ICMPv6 type and code fields.
* OpenFlow 1.4+ OFPT_SET_ASYNC_CONFIG and OFPT_GET_ASYNC_CONFIG are
now implemented.
- ovs-ofctl:
* New "out_group" keyword for OpenFlow 1.1+ matching on output group.
- Tunnels:
* Geneve tunnels can now match and set options and the OAM bit.
* The nonstandard GRE64 tunnel extension has been dropped.
- Support Multicast Listener Discovery (MLDv1 and MLDv2).
- Add 'symmetric_l3l4' and 'symmetric_l3l4+udp' hash functions.
- sFlow agent now reports tunnel and MPLS structures.
- New 'check-system-userspace', 'check-kmod' and 'check-kernel' Makefile
targets to run a new system testsuite. These tests can be run inside
a Vagrant box. See INSTALL.md for details
- Mark --syslog-target argument as deprecated. It will be removed in
the next OVS release.
- Added --user option to all daemons
- Add support for connection tracking through the new "ct" action
and "ct_state"/"ct_zone"/"ct_mark"/"ct_label" match fields. Only
available on Linux kernels with the connection tracking module loaded.
- Add experimental version of OVN. OVN, the Open Virtual Network, is a
system to support virtual network abstraction. OVN complements the
existing capabilities of OVS to add native support for virtual network
abstractions, such as virtual L2 and L3 overlays and security groups.
- RHEL packaging:
* DPDK ports may now be created via network scripts (see README.RHEL).
- DPDK:
* Requires DPDK 2.2
* Added multiqueue support to vhost-user
* Note: QEMU 2.5+ required for multiqueue support

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- Flow table modifications are now atomic, meaning that each packet
now sees a coherent version of the OpenFlow pipeline. For
example, if a controller removes all flows with a single OpenFlow
"flow_mod", no packet sees an intermediate version of the OpenFlow
pipeline where only some of the flows have been deleted.
- Added support for SFQ, FQ_CoDel and CoDel qdiscs.
- Add bash command-line completion support for ovs-vsctl Please check
utilities/ovs-command-compgen.INSTALL.md for how to use.
- The MAC learning feature now includes per-port fairness to mitigate
MAC flooding attacks.
- New support for a "conjunctive match" OpenFlow extension, which
allows constructing OpenFlow matches of the form "field1 in
{a,b,c...} AND field2 in {d,e,f...}" and generalizations. For details,
see documentation for the "conjunction" action in ovs-ofctl(8).
- Add bash command-line completion support for ovs-appctl/ovs-dpctl/
ovs-ofctl/ovsdb-tool commands. Please check
utilities/ovs-command-compgen.INSTALL.md for how to use.
- The "learn" action supports a new flag "delete_learned" that causes
the learned flows to be deleted when the flow with the "learn" action
is deleted.
- Basic support for the Geneve tunneling protocol. It is not yet
possible to generate or match options. This is planned for a future
release. The protocol is documented at
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-gross-geneve-00
- The OVS database now reports controller rate limiting statistics.
- sflow now exports information about LACP-based bonds, port names, and
OpenFlow port numbers, as well as datapath performance counters.
- ovs-dpctl functionality is now available for datapaths integrated
into ovs-vswitchd, via ovs-appctl. Some existing ovs-appctl
commands are now redundant and will be removed in a future
release. See ovs-vswitchd(8) for details.
- OpenFlow:
* OpenFlow 1.4 bundles are now supported for flow mods and port
mods. For flow mods, both 'atomic' and 'ordered' bundle flags
are trivially supported, as all bundled messages are executed
in the order they were added and all flow table modifications
are now atomic to the datapath. Port mods may not appear in
atomic bundles, as port status modifications are not atomic.
* IPv6 flow label and neighbor discovery fields are now modifiable.
* OpenFlow 1.5 extended registers are now supported.
* The OpenFlow 1.5 actset_output field is now supported.
* OpenFlow 1.5 Copy-Field action is now supported.
* OpenFlow 1.5 masked Set-Field action is now supported.
* OpenFlow 1.3+ table features requests are now supported (read-only).
* Nicira extension "move" actions may now be included in action sets.
* "resubmit" actions may now be included in action sets. The resubmit
is executed last, and only if the action set has no "output" or "group"
action.
* OpenFlow 1.4+ flow "importance" is now maintained in the flow table.
* A new Netronome extension to OpenFlow 1.5+ allows control over the
fields hashed for OpenFlow select groups. See "selection_method" and
related options in ovs-ofctl(8) for details.
- ovs-ofctl has a new '--bundle' option that makes the flow mod commands
('add-flow', 'add-flows', 'mod-flows', 'del-flows', and 'replace-flows')
use an OpenFlow 1.4 bundle to operate the modifications as a single
atomic transaction. If any of the flow mods in a transaction fail, none
of them are executed. All flow mods in a bundle appear to datapath
lookups simultaneously.
- ovs-ofctl 'add-flow' and 'add-flows' commands now accept arbitrary flow
mods as an input by allowing the flow specification to start with an
explicit 'add', 'modify', 'modify_strict', 'delete', or 'delete_strict'
keyword. A missing keyword is treated as 'add', so this is fully
backwards compatible. With the new '--bundle' option all the flow mods
are executed as a single atomic transaction using an OpenFlow 1.4 bundle.
- ovs-pki: Changed message digest algorithm from MD5 to SHA-1 because
MD5 is no longer secure and some operating systems have started to disable
it in OpenSSL.
- ovsdb-server: New OVSDB protocol extension allows inequality tests on
"optional scalar" columns. See ovsdb-server(1) for details.
- ovs-vsctl now permits immutable columns in a new row to be modified in
the same transaction that creates the row.
- test-controller has been renamed ovs-testcontroller at request of users
who find it useful for testing basic OpenFlow setups. It is still not
a necessary or desirable part of most Open vSwitch deployments.
- Support for travis-ci.org based continuous integration builds has been
added. Build failures are reported to buildopenvswitch.org. See INSTALL.md
file for additional details.
- Support for the Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (IEEE 802.1D-2004).
The implementation has been tested successfully against the Ixia Automated
Network Validation Library (ANVL).
- Stats are no longer updated on fake bond interface.
- Keep active bond interface selection across OVS restart.
- A simple wrapper script, 'ovs-docker', to integrate OVS with Docker
containers. If and when there is a native integration of Open vSwitch
with Docker, the wrapper script will be retired.
- Added support for DPDK Tunneling. VXLAN, GRE, and Geneve are supported
protocols. This is generic tunneling mechanism for userspace datapath.
- Support for multicast snooping (IGMPv1, IGMPv2 and IGMPv3)
- Support for Linux kernels up to 4.0.x
- The documentation now use the term 'destination' to mean one of syslog,
console or file for vlog logging instead of the previously used term
'facility'.
- Support for VXLAN Group Policy extension
- Initial support for the IETF Auto-Attach SPBM draft standard. This
contains rudimentary support for the LLDP protocol as needed for
Auto-Attach.
- The default OpenFlow and OVSDB ports are now the IANA-assigned
numbers. OpenFlow is 6653 and OVSDB is 6640.
- Support for DPDK vHost.
- Support for outer UDP checksums in Geneve and VXLAN.
- The kernel vports with dependencies are no longer part of the overall
openvswitch.ko but built and loaded automatically as individual kernel
modules (vport-*.ko).
- Support for STT tunneling.
- ovs-sim: New developer tool for simulating multiple OVS instances.
See ovs-sim(1) for more information.
- Support to configure method (--syslog-method argument) that determines
how daemons will talk with syslog.
- Support for "ovs-appctl vlog/list-pattern" command that lets to query
logging message format for each destination.

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- OpenFlow 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 are now enabled by default in
ovs-vswitchd.
- Linux kernel datapath now has an exact match cache optimizing the
flow matching process.
- Datapath flows now have partially wildcarded tranport port field
matches. This reduces userspace upcalls, but increases the
number of different masks in the datapath. The kernel datapath
exact match cache removes the overhead of matching the incoming
packets with the larger number of masks, but when paired with an
older kernel module, some workloads may perform worse with the
new userspace.
- Compatibility with autoconf 2.63 (previously >=2.64)

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- Internal ports are no longer brought up by default, because it
should be an administrator task to bring up devices as they are
configured properly.
- ovs-vsctl now reports when ovs-vswitchd fails to create a new port or
bridge.
- Port creation and configuration errors are now stored in a new error
column of the Interface table and included in 'ovs-vsctl show'.
- The "ovsdbmonitor" graphical tool has been removed, because it was
poorly maintained and not widely used.
- New "check-ryu" Makefile target for running Ryu tests for OpenFlow
controllers against Open vSwitch. See INSTALL.md for details.
- Added IPFIX support for SCTP flows and templates for ICMPv4/v6 flows.
- Upon the receipt of a SIGHUP signal, ovs-vswitchd no longer reopens its
log file (it will terminate instead). Please use 'ovs-appctl vlog/reopen'
instead.
- Support for Linux kernels up to 3.14. From Kernel 3.12 onwards OVS uses
tunnel API for GRE and VXLAN.
- Added DPDK support.
- Added support for custom vlog patterns in Python

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- Address prefix tracking support for flow tables. New columns
"prefixes" in OVS-DB table "Flow_Table" controls which packet
header fields are used for address prefix tracking. Prefix
tracking allows the classifier to skip rules with longer than
necessary prefixes, resulting in better wildcarding for datapath
flows. Default configuration is to not use any fields for prefix
tracking. However, if any flow tables contain both exact matches
and masked matches for IP address fields, OVS performance may be
increased by using this feature.
* As of now, the fields for which prefix lookup can be enabled
are: 'tun_id', 'tun_src', 'tun_dst', 'nw_src', 'nw_dst' (or
aliases 'ip_src' and 'ip_dst'), 'ipv6_src', and 'ipv6_dst'.
(Using this feature for 'tun_id' would only make sense if the
tunnel IDs have prefix structure similar to IP addresses.)
* There is a maximum number of fields that can be enabled for any
one flow table. Currently this limit is 3.
* Examples:
$ ovs-vsctl set Bridge br0 flow_tables:0=N1 -- \
--id=N1 create Flow_Table name=table0
$ ovs-vsctl set Bridge br0 flow_tables:1=N1 -- \
--id=N1 create Flow_Table name=table1
$ ovs-vsctl set Flow_Table table0 prefixes=ip_dst,ip_src
$ ovs-vsctl set Flow_Table table1 prefixes=[]
- TCP flags matching: OVS now supports matching of TCP flags. This
has an adverse performance impact when using OVS userspace 1.10
or older (no megaflows support) together with the new OVS kernel
module. It is recommended that the kernel and userspace modules
both are upgraded at the same time.
- The default OpenFlow and OVSDB ports will change to
IANA-assigned numbers in a future release. Consider updating
your installations to specify port numbers instead of using the
defaults.
- OpenFlow:
* The OpenFlow 1.1+ "Write-Actions" instruction is now supported.
* OVS limits the OpenFlow port numbers it assigns to port 32767 and
below, leaving port numbers above that range free for assignment
by the controller.
* ovs-vswitchd now honors changes to the "ofport_request" column
in the Interface table by changing the port's OpenFlow port
number.
* The Open vSwitch software switch now supports OpenFlow groups.
- ovs-vswitchd.conf.db.5 man page will contain graphviz/dot
diagram only if graphviz package was installed at the build time.
- Support for Linux kernels up to 3.11
- ovs-dpctl:
The "show" command also displays mega flow mask stats.
- ovs-ofctl:
* New command "ofp-parse-pcap" to dump OpenFlow from PCAP files.
- ovs-controller has been renamed test-controller. It is no longer
packaged or installed by default, because too many users assumed
incorrectly that ovs-controller was a necessary or desirable part
of an Open vSwitch deployment.
- Added vlog option to export to a UDP syslog sink.
- ovsdb-client:
* The "monitor" command can now monitor all tables in a database,
instead of being limited to a single table.
- The flow-eviction-threshold has been replaced by the flow-limit which is a
hard limit on the number of flows in the datapath. It defaults to 200,000
flows. OVS automatically adjusts this number depending on network
conditions.
- Added IPv6 support for active and passive socket communications.

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- The ovs-vswitchd process is no longer single-threaded. Multiple
threads are now used to handle flow set up and asynchronous
logging.
- OpenFlow:
* Experimental support for OpenFlow 1.1 (in addition to 1.2 and
1.3, which had experimental support in 1.10).
* Experimental protocol support for OpenFlow 1.1+ groups. This
does not yet include an implementation in the Open vSwitch
software switch.
* Experimental protocol support for OpenFlow 1.2+ meters. This
does not yet include an implementation in the Open vSwitch
software switch.
* New support for matching outer source and destination IP address
of tunneled packets, for tunnel ports configured with the newly
added "remote_ip=flow" and "local_ip=flow" options.
* Support for matching on metadata 'pkt_mark' for interacting with
other system components. On Linux this corresponds to the skb
mark.
* Support matching, rewriting SCTP ports
- The Interface table in the database has a new "ifindex" column to
report the interface's OS-assigned ifindex.
- New "check-oftest" Makefile target for running OFTest against Open
vSwitch. See README-OFTest for details.
- The flow eviction threshold has been moved to the Open_vSwitch table.
- Database names are now mandatory when specifying ovsdb-server options
through database paths (e.g. Private key option with the database name
should look like "--private-key=db:Open_vSwitch,SSL,private_key").
- Added ovs-dev.py, a utility script helpful for Open vSwitch developers.
- Support for Linux kernels up to 3.10
- ovs-ofctl:
* New "ofp-parse" for printing OpenFlow messages read from a file.
* New commands for OpenFlow 1.1+ groups.
- Added configurable flow caching support to IPFIX exporter.
- Dropped support for Linux pre-2.6.32.
- Log file timestamps and ovsdb commit timestamps are now reported
with millisecond resolution. (Previous versions only reported
whole seconds.)