You can think of the "local" port as the host's IP stack. In OVS, let's say you created a bridge "br0", then traffic to and from any addresses associated with "br0" would be through that "local" port. It's not directly related to in-band control other than that the IP-related traffic is destined to the IP associated with that local port. Let's say you didn't want to use OpenFlow at all, but you still wanted to be able to SSH to the IP address on "br0", you'd be hitting it through the "local" port on your OVS switch. Does that help clarify things?
--Justin On Jan 6, 2013, at 10:44 PM, 주펑 <zhufeng....@samsung.com> wrote: > Hi all, > > The Spec defines 'LOCAL' port as follows: > Optional: LOCAL: Represents the switch's local networking stack and its > management stack. Can be used as an ingress port or as an output port. The > local port enables remote entities to interact > with the switch and its network services via the OpenFlow network, rather > than via a separate control network. With a suitable set of default flow > entries it can be used to implement an in-band controller > connection. > > It looks like that 'LOCAL' is used for in-band control. That is, the Openflow > msg handling engine is binded to 'LOCAL' port so OF msg can be correctly > received. > Is my understanding correct? What else should be binded to 'LOCAL' for > in-band control? > > So next question is, if I'd like to use out-of-band control in my network, > does it mean that 'LOCAL' port is useless at all? > Is there other usage case 'LOCAL' port can be involved in? > > I'm not very clear about what's refered by Spec's words of 'local networking > stack and its management stack'. What exact stack it could be? > > I once think about a case, where user doesn't want to put everything in > controller, so he keep the ARP processing in the switch. > In this case, can 'LOCAL' port be used for ARP packet handling? > > Any other reasonable cases? > > > Thanks a lot for the discussion. > > > > > > > <201301071544055_Z5JE7EUA.gif> > _______________________________________________ > discuss mailing list > discuss@openvswitch.org > http://openvswitch.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@openvswitch.org http://openvswitch.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
