Store port VLANs in topology

[phpHavok]

We are wanting to keep track of interface VLANs in VAN. Our HP switches send out IEEE 802.1 Port VLAN Ids over LLDP, and we are able to capture and read these packets from within VAN with a SequencedPacketListener. It seems like VAN should automatically store VLAN information in implementations of com.hp.sdn.model.Interface, but it doesn't. Is VLAN information stored anywhere else in VAN, or will we need to manually capture LLDP packets and store VLANs ourselves? If a manual solution is required, is there a way to implement Interface and force our implementation to be selected over DefaultInterface? Ideally, we want the existing VAN REST API to start returning VLAN information. Otherwise, we will have to create our own REST API and have clients call it in addition to VAN's API for basic topology information.

Thanks!

[ShaunWackerly · Accepted solution]

Hi phpHavok,

In the current VAN release (2.7), when a switch connects to VAN over the OpenFlow control-plane, VAN will automatically populate the DeviceService with a Device and set of Interfaces. The Device corresponds with the OpenFlow datapath and the set of Interfaces corresponds with the ports which are reported by the switch (in response to the multi-part PORT_DESC request).

Currently VAN does not track vlans configured on the switches, so you'd need to implement your own discovery mechanism for device vlans. To get these devices added and returned from DeviceService, you'd need to create a DeviceSupplier. You can do that by getting an OSGI reference to DeviceSuppliersBroker and calling DeviceSuppliersBroker.registerSupplier(x). That call will return a DeviceSupplierService implementation which will let your DeviceSupplier update interfaces by using DeviceSupplierService.createOrUpdateInterface().

Remember that using the above solution, you'll now be getting port Interfaces and vlan Interfaces both returned in a combined set from DeviceService.getInterfaces(Device).

Shaun

[phpHavok]

Thanks very much, Shaun! Perhaps an LLDP module would be something other users might be interested in on the store :)