4 * New unixctl command 'ovsdb-server/get-db-storage-status' to show the
5 status of the storage that's backing a database.
7 * Removed support for vhost-user dequeue zero-copy.
8 - The environment variable OVS_UNBOUND_CONF, if set, is now used
9 as the DNS resolver's (unbound) configuration file.
11 * Support for kernel versions up to 5.8.x.
13 * The terms "master" and "slave" have been replaced by "primary" and
14 "secondary", respectively, for OpenFlow connection roles.
19 - ovs-vswitchd no longer deletes datapath flows on exit by default.
21 * The OpenFlow ofp_desc/serial_num may now be configured by setting the
22 value of other-config:dp-sn in the Bridge table.
23 * Added support to watch CONTROLLER port status in fast failover group.
24 * New action "delete_field".
26 * Deprecated DPDK pdump packet capture support removed.
27 * Deprecated DPDK ring ports (dpdkr) are no longer supported.
28 * Add hardware offload support for VLAN Push/Pop actions (experimental).
29 * Add hardware offload support for matching IPv6 protocol (experimental).
30 * Add hardware offload support for set of IPv6 src/dst/ttl
31 and tunnel push-output actions (experimental).
32 * OVS validated with DPDK 19.11.2, due to the inclusion of fixes for
33 CVE-2020-10722, CVE-2020-10723, CVE-2020-10724, CVE-2020-10725 and
34 CVE-2020-10726, this DPDK version is strongly recommended to be used.
35 * New 'ovs-appctl dpdk/log-list' and 'ovs-appctl dpdk/log-set' commands
36 to list and change log levels in DPDK components.
37 * Vhost-user Dequeue zero-copy support is deprecated and will be removed
40 * Support for kernel versions up to 5.5.x.
42 * New netdev class 'afxdp-nonpmd' for netdev-afxdp to save CPU cycles
43 by enabling interrupt mode.
45 * Removed artificial datapath flow limit that was 65536.
46 Now number of datapath flows is fully controlled by revalidators and the
47 'other_config:flow-limit' knob.
48 * Add support for conntrack zone-based timeout policy.
49 * New configuration knob 'other_config:lb-output-action' for bond ports
50 that enables new datapath action 'lb_output' to avoid recirculation
51 in balance-tcp mode. Disabled by default.
52 * Add runtime CPU ISA detection to allow optimized ISA functions
53 * Add support for dynamically changing DPCLS subtable lookup functions
54 * Add ISA optimized DPCLS lookup function using AVX512
55 - New configuration knob 'other_config:bond-primary' for AB bonds
56 that specifies interface will be the preferred port if it is active.
57 - Tunnels: TC Flower offload
58 * Tunnel Local endpoint address masked match are supported.
59 * Tunnel Romte endpoint address masked match are supported.
65 * OVN has been removed from this repository. It now exists as a
66 separate project. You can find it at
67 https://github.com/ovn-org/ovn.git
69 * Add option to enable, disable and query TCP sequence checking in
71 * Add support for conntrack zone limits.
72 * Command "ovs-appctl dpctl/dump-flows" refactored to show subtable
73 miniflow bits for userspace datapath.
75 * New option 'use-need-wakeup' for netdev-afxdp to control enabling
76 of corresponding 'need_wakeup' flag in AF_XDP rings. Enabled by default
77 if supported by libbpf.
78 * 'xdpmode' option for netdev-afxdp renamed to 'xdp-mode'.
79 Modes also updated. New values:
80 native-with-zerocopy - former DRV
81 native - new one, DRV without zero-copy
83 best-effort [default] - new one, chooses the best available from
86 * DPDK pdump packet capture support disabled by default. New configure
87 option '--enable-dpdk-pdump' to enable it.
88 * DPDK pdump support is deprecated and will be removed in next releases.
89 * DPDK ring ports (dpdkr) are deprecated and will be removed in next
91 * Add support for DPDK 19.11.
92 * Add hardware offload support for output, drop, set of MAC, IPv4 and
93 TCP/UDP ports actions (experimental).
94 * Add experimental support for TSO.
96 * The rstp_statistics column in Port table will only be updated every
97 stats-update-interval configured in Open_vSwitch table.
99 * When ovsdb-server is running in backup mode, the default value of probe
100 interval is increased to 60 seconds for the connection to the
101 replication server. This value is configurable with the unixctl
102 command - ovsdb-server/set-active-ovsdb-server-probe-interval.
103 * ovsdb-server: New OVSDB extension to allow clients to specify row UUIDs.
104 - 'ovs-appctl dpctl/dump-flows' can now show offloaded=partial for
105 partially offloaded flows, dp:dpdk for fully offloaded by dpdk, and
106 type filter supports new filters: "dpdk" and "partially-offloaded".
107 - GTP-U Tunnel Protocol
108 * Add two new fields: tun_gtpu_flags, tun_gtpu_msgtype.
109 * Only support for userspace datapath.
111 v2.12.0 - 03 Sep 2019
112 ---------------------
114 * New option 'other_config:dpdk-socket-limit' to limit amount of
115 hugepage memory that can be used by DPDK.
116 * Add support for vHost Post-copy Live Migration (experimental).
117 * OVS validated with DPDK 18.11.2 which is the new minimal supported
119 * DPDK 18.11.1 and lower is no longer supported.
120 * New option 'tx-retries-max' to set the maximum amount of vhost tx
121 retries that can be made.
123 * All features required by OpenFlow 1.5 are now implemented, so
124 ovs-vswitchd now enables OpenFlow 1.5 by default (in addition to
125 OpenFlow 1.0 to 1.4).
126 * Removed support for OpenFlow 1.6 (draft), which ONF abandoned.
127 * New action "check_pkt_larger".
128 * Support for OpenFlow 1.5 "meter" action.
129 - Userspace datapath:
130 * ICMPv6 ND enhancements: support for match and set ND options type
132 * Add v4/v6 fragmentation support for conntrack.
133 * New ovs-appctl "dpctl/ipf-set-enabled" and "dpctl/ipf-set-disabled"
134 commands for userspace datapath conntrack fragmentation support.
135 * New "ovs-appctl dpctl/ipf-set-min-frag" command for userspace
136 datapath conntrack fragmentation support.
137 * New "ovs-appctl dpctl/ipf-set-max-nfrags" command for userspace datapath
138 conntrack fragmentation support.
139 * New "ovs-appctl dpctl/ipf-get-status" command for userspace datapath
140 conntrack fragmentation support.
141 * New action "check_pkt_len".
142 * Port configuration with "other-config:priority-tags" now has a mode
143 that retains the 802.1Q header even if VLAN and priority are both zero.
144 * 'ovs-appctl exit' now implies cleanup of non-internal ports in userspace
145 datapath regardless of '--cleanup' option. Use '--cleanup' to remove
147 * Removed experimental tag for SMC cache.
148 * Datapath classifer code refactored to enable function pointers to select
149 the lookup implementation at runtime. This enables specialization of
150 specific subtables based on the miniflow attributes, enhancing the
151 performance of the subtable search.
152 * Add Linux AF_XDP support through a new experimental netdev type "afxdp".
154 * OVSDB clients can now resynchronize with clustered servers much more
155 quickly after a brief disconnection, saving bandwidth and CPU time.
156 See section 4.1.15 of ovsdb-server(7) for details of related OVSDB
158 * Support to convert from cluster database to standalone database is now
159 available when clustered is down and cannot be revived using ovsdb-tool
160 . Check "Database Migration Commands" in ovsdb-tool man section.
163 - select IPAM mac_prefix in a random manner if not provided by the user
164 - add the capability to specify a static IPv4 and/or IPv6 address and
165 get the L2 one allocated dynamically using the following syntax:
166 ovn-nbctl lsp-set-addresses <port> "dynamic <IPv4 addr> <IPv6 addr>"
167 * Added the HA chassis group support.
168 * Added 'external' logical port support.
169 * Added Policy-based routing(PBR) support to create permit/deny/reroute
170 policies on the logical router. New table(Logical_Router_Policy) added in
171 OVN-NB schema. New "ovn-nbctl" commands to add/delete/list PBR policies.
172 * Support for Transport Zones, a way to separate chassis into
173 logical groups which results in tunnels only been formed between
174 members of the same transport zone(s).
175 * Support for IGMP Snooping and IGMP Querier.
176 - New QoS type "linux-netem" on Linux.
177 - Added support for TLS Server Name Indication (SNI).
179 * Support for the kernel versions 4.19.x and 4.20.x.
180 * Support for the kernel version 5.0.x.
181 * Add support for conntrack zone-based timeout policy.
182 - 'ovs-dpctl dump-flows' is no longer suitable for dumping offloaded flows.
183 'ovs-appctl dpctl/dump-flows' should be used instead.
184 - Add new argument '--offload-stats' for command
185 'ovs-appctl bridge/dump-flows',
186 so it can display offloaded packets statistics.
187 - Add L2 GRE tunnel over IPv6 support.
189 v2.11.0 - 19 Feb 2019
190 ---------------------
192 * OFPMP_TABLE_FEATURES_REQUEST can now modify table features.
194 * "mod-table" command can now change OpenFlow table names.
196 * OVN-SB schema changed: duplicated IP with same Encapsulation type
197 is not allowed any more. Please refer to
198 Documentation/intro/install/ovn-upgrades.rst for the instructions
199 in case there are problems encountered when upgrading from an earlier
201 * New support for IPSEC encrypted tunnels between hypervisors.
202 * ovn-ctl: allow passing user:group ids to the OVN daemons.
204 - add the capability to dynamically assign just L2 addresses
205 - add the capability to specify a static ip address and get the L2 one
206 allocated dynamically using the following syntax:
207 ovn-nbctl lsp-set-addresses <port> "dynamic <IP>"
209 * Add support for DPDK 18.11
210 * Add support for port representors.
211 - Userspace datapath:
212 * Add option for simple round-robin based Rxq to PMD assignment.
213 It can be set with pmd-rxq-assign.
214 * Add support for Auto load balancing of PMDs (experimental)
215 * Added new per-port configurable option to manage EMC:
216 'other_config:emc-enable'.
217 - Add 'symmetric_l3' hash function.
218 - OVS now honors 'updelay' and 'downdelay' for bonds with LACP configured.
220 * New configuration option "offload-rebalance", that enables dynamic
221 rebalancing of offloaded flows.
222 - The environment variable OVS_SYSLOG_METHOD, if set, is now used
223 as the default syslog method.
224 - The environment variable OVS_CTL_TIMEOUT, if set, is now used
225 as the default timeout for control utilities.
226 - The environment variable OVS_RESOLV_CONF, if set, is now used
227 as the DNS server configuration file.
229 * OVN packages are split from OVS packages. A new spec
230 file - ovn-fedora.spec.in is added to generate OVN packages.
232 * Support for the kernel versions 4.16.x, 4.17.x, and 4.18.x.
234 v2.10.0 - 18 Aug 2018
235 ---------------------
236 - ovs-vswitchd and utilities now support DNS names in OpenFlow and
239 * New options --l7 and --l7-len to "ofproto/trace" command.
240 * Previous versions gave OpenFlow tables default names of the form
241 "table#". These are not helpful names for the purpose of accepting
242 and displaying table names, so now tables by default have no names.
243 * The "null" interface type, deprecated since 2013, has been removed.
244 * Add minimum network namespace support for Linux.
245 * New command "lacp/show-stats"
247 * ovs-ofctl now accepts and display table names in place of numbers. By
248 default it always accepts names and in interactive use it displays them;
249 use --names or --no-names to override. See ovs-ofctl(8) for details.
250 - ovs-vsctl: New commands "add-bond-iface" and "del-bond-iface".
252 * New commands "ct-set-limits", "ct-del-limits", and "ct-get-limits".
254 * OFPT_ROLE_STATUS is now available in OpenFlow 1.3.
255 * OpenFlow 1.5 extensible statistics (OXS) now implemented.
256 * New OpenFlow 1.0 extensions for group support.
257 * Default selection method for select groups is now dp_hash with improved
260 * Add support for compiling OVS with the latest Linux 4.14 kernel.
261 * Added support for meters.
262 * Add support for conntrack zone limit.
264 * Implemented icmp4/icmp6/tcp_reset actions in order to drop the packet
265 and reply with a RST for TCP or ICMPv4/ICMPv6 unreachable message for
266 other IPv4/IPv6-based protocols whenever a reject ACL rule is hit.
267 * ACL match conditions can now match on Port_Groups as well as address
268 sets that are automatically generated by Port_Groups. ACLs can be
269 applied directly to Port_Groups as well.
270 * ovn-nbctl can now run as a daemon (long-lived, background process).
271 See ovn-nbctl(8) for details.
273 * New 'check-dpdk' Makefile target to run a new system testsuite.
274 See Testing topic for the details.
275 * Add LSC interrupt support for DPDK physical devices.
276 * Allow init to fail and record DPDK status/version in OVS database.
277 * Add experimental flow hardware offload support
278 * Support both shared and per port mempools for DPDK devices.
279 - Userspace datapath:
280 * Commands ovs-appctl dpif-netdev/pmd-*-show can now work on a single PMD
281 * Detailed PMD performance metrics available with new command
282 ovs-appctl dpif-netdev/pmd-perf-show
283 * Supervision of PMD performance metrics and logging of suspicious
285 * Add signature match cache (SMC) as experimental feature. When turned on,
286 it improves throughput when traffic has many more flows than EMC size.
288 * Implemented ERSPAN protocol (draft-foschiano-erspan-00.txt) for
289 both kernel datapath and userspace datapath.
290 * Added port-based and flow-based ERSPAN tunnel port support, added
291 OpenFlow rules matching ERSPAN fields. See ovs-fields(7).
293 * ovs-pki now generates x.509 version 3 certificate. The new format adds
294 subjectAltName field and sets its value the same as common name (CN).
298 - NSH implementation now conforms to latest draft (draft-ietf-sfc-nsh-28).
300 * Add a new action dec_nsh_ttl.
301 * Enable NSH support in kernel datapath.
302 - OVSDB has new, experimental support for database clustering:
303 * New high-level documentation in ovsdb(7).
304 * New file format documentation for developers in ovsdb(5).
305 * Protocol documentation moved from ovsdb-server(1) to ovsdb-server(7).
306 * ovsdb-server now supports online schema conversion via
307 "ovsdb-client convert".
308 * ovsdb-server now always hosts a built-in database named _Server. See
309 ovsdb-server(5) for more details.
310 * ovsdb-client: New "get-schema-cksum", "query", "backup", "restore",
311 and "wait" commands. New --timeout option.
312 * ovsdb-tool: New "create-cluster", "join-cluster", "db-cid", "db-sid",
313 "db-local-address", "db-is-clustered", "db-is-standalone", "db-name",
314 "schema-name", "compare-versions", and "check-cluster" commands.
315 * ovsdb-server: New ovs-appctl commands for managing clusters.
316 * ovs-sandbox: New support for clustered databases.
317 - ovs-vsctl and other commands that display data in tables now support a
318 --max-column-width option to limit column width.
319 - No longer slow-path traffic that sends to a controller. Applications,
320 such as OVN ACL logging, want to send a copy of a packet to a
321 controller while leaving the actual packet forwarding in the datapath.
323 * The "requested-chassis" option for a logical switch port now accepts a
324 chassis "hostname" in addition to a chassis "name".
326 - Added support to send IPv6 Router Advertisement packets in response to
327 the IPv6 Router Solicitation packets from the VIF ports.
328 - Added support to generate Neighbor Solicitation packets using the OVN
329 action 'nd_ns' to resolve unknown next hop MAC addresses for the
331 * Add support for QoS bandwidth limit with DPDK.
332 * ovn-ctl: New commands run_nb_ovsdb and run_sb_ovsdb.
333 * ovn-sbctl, ovn-nbctl: New options --leader-only, --no-leader-only.
335 * ct_clear action is now backed by kernel datapath. Support is probed for
338 * Add support for compiling OVS with the latest Linux 4.13 kernel
339 - ovs-dpctl and related ovs-appctl commands:
340 * "flush-conntrack" now accept a 5-tuple to delete a specific
341 connection tracking entry.
342 * New "ct-set-maxconns", "ct-get-maxconns", and "ct-get-nconns" commands
343 for userspace datapath.
344 - No longer send packets to the Linux TAP device if it's DOWN unless it is
345 in another networking namespace.
347 * Add support for DPDK v17.11
348 * Add support for vHost IOMMU
349 * New debug appctl command 'netdev-dpdk/get-mempool-info'.
350 * All the netdev-dpdk appctl commands described in ovs-vswitchd man page.
352 - DPDK physical ports now return custom set of "dropped", "error" and
353 "management" statistics.
354 - ovs-ofctl dump-ports command now prints new of set custom statistics
355 if available (for OpenFlow 1.4+).
356 * Switch from round-robin allocation of rxq to pmd assignments to a
357 utilization-based allocation.
358 * New appctl command 'dpif-netdev/pmd-rxq-rebalance' to rebalance rxq to
360 * Add rxq utilization of pmd to appctl 'dpif-netdev/pmd-rxq-show'.
361 * Add support for vHost dequeue zero copy (experimental).
362 - Userspace datapath:
363 * Output packet batching support.
365 * Datapath IDs may now be specified as 0x1 (etc.) instead of 16 digits.
366 * Configuring a controller, or unconfiguring all controllers, now deletes
367 all groups and meters (as well as all flows).
368 - New --enable-sparse configure option enables "sparse" checking by default.
369 - Added additional information to vhost-user status.
374 * ovs-ofctl can now accept and display port names in place of numbers. By
375 default it always accepts names and in interactive use it displays them;
376 use --names or --no-names to override. See ovs-ofctl(8) for details.
377 * "ovs-ofctl dump-flows" now accepts --no-stats to omit flow statistics.
378 - New ovs-dpctl command "ct-stats-show" to show connection tracking stats.
380 * Added support to set packet mark for tunnel endpoint using
381 `egress_pkt_mark` OVSDB option.
382 * When using Linux kernel datapath tunnels may be created using rtnetlink.
383 This will allow us to take advantage of new tunnel features without
384 having to make changes to the vport modules.
385 - EMC insertion probability is reduced to 1% and is configurable via
386 the new 'other_config:emc-insert-inv-prob' option.
388 * DPDK log messages redirected to OVS logging subsystem.
389 Log level can be changed in a usual OVS way using
390 'ovs-appctl vlog' commands for 'dpdk' module. Lower bound
391 still can be configured via extra arguments for DPDK EAL.
392 * dpdkvhostuser ports are marked as deprecated. They will be removed
393 in an upcoming release.
394 * Support for DPDK v17.05.1.
395 - IPFIX now provides additional counters:
396 * Total counters since metering process startup.
397 * Per-flow TCP flag counters.
398 * Multicast, broadcast, and unicast counters.
399 - New support for multiple VLANs (802.1ad or "QinQ"), including a new
400 "dot1q-tunnel" port VLAN mode.
401 - In ovn-vsctl and vtep-ctl, record UUIDs in commands may now be
402 abbreviated to 4 hex digits.
403 - Userspace Datapath:
404 * Added NAT support for userspace datapath.
405 * Added FTP and TFTP support with NAT for userspace datapath.
406 * Experimental NSH (Network Service Header) support in userspace datapath.
408 * New built-in DNS support.
409 * IPAM for IPv4 can now exclude user-defined addresses from assignment.
410 * IPAM can now assign IPv6 addresses.
411 * Make the DHCPv4 router setting optional.
412 * Gratuitous ARP for NAT addresses on a distributed logical router.
413 * Allow ovn-controller SSL configuration to be obtained from vswitchd
415 * ovn-trace now has basic support for tracing distributed firewalls.
416 * In ovn-nbctl and ovn-sbctl, record UUIDs in commands may now be
417 abbreviated to 4 hex digits.
418 * "ovn-sbctl lflow-list" can now print OpenFlow flows that correspond
420 * Now uses OVSDB RBAC support to reduce impact of compromised hypervisors.
421 * Multiple chassis may now be specified for L3 gateways. When more than
422 one chassis is specified, OVN will manage high availability for that
424 * Add support for ACL logging.
425 * ovn-northd now has native support for active-standby high availability.
426 - Tracing with ofproto/trace now traces through recirculation.
428 * New support for role-based access control (see ovsdb-server(1)).
429 - New commands 'stp/show' and 'rstp/show' (see ovs-vswitchd(8)).
431 * All features required by OpenFlow 1.4 are now implemented, so
432 ovs-vswitchd now enables OpenFlow 1.4 by default (in addition to
433 OpenFlow 1.0 to 1.3).
434 * Increased support for OpenFlow 1.6 (draft).
435 * Bundles now support hashing by just nw_src or nw_dst.
436 * The "learn" action now supports a "limit" option (see ovs-ofctl(8)).
437 * The port status bit OFPPS_LIVE now reflects link aliveness.
438 * OpenFlow 1.5 packet-out is now supported.
439 * Support for OpenFlow 1.5 field packet_type and packet-type-aware
441 * Added generic encap and decap actions (EXT-382).
442 First supported use case is encap/decap for Ethernet.
443 * Added NSH (Network Service Header) support in userspace
444 Used generic encap and decap actions to implement encapsulation and
445 decapsulation of NSH header.
446 IETF NSH draft - https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-sfc-nsh/
447 * Conntrack state is only available to the processing path that
448 follows the "recirc_table" argument of the ct() action. Starting
449 in OVS 2.8, this state is now cleared for the current processing
450 path whenever ct() is called.
452 * OVN services are no longer restarted automatically after upgrade.
453 * ovs-vswitchd and ovsdb-server run as non-root users by default.
454 - Add --cleanup option to command 'ovs-appctl exit' (see ovs-vswitchd(8)).
456 * Use new tunnel port option "packet_type" to configure L2 vs. L3.
457 * In conjunction with PTAP tunnel ports can handle a mix of L2 and L3
459 * New vxlan tunnel extension "gpe" to support VXLAN-GPE tunnels.
460 * New support for non-Ethernet (L3) payloads in GRE and VXLAN-GPE.
461 - The BFD detection multiplier is now user-configurable.
462 - Add experimental support for hardware offloading
463 * HW offloading is disabled by default.
464 * HW offloading is done through the TC interface.
465 - IPv6 link local addresses are now supported on Linux. Use % to designate
469 ---------------------
470 - Utilities and daemons that support SSL now allow protocols and
471 ciphers to be configured with --ssl-protocols and --ssl-ciphers.
473 * QoS is now implemented via egress shaping rather than ingress policing.
474 * DSCP marking is now supported, via the new northbound QoS table.
475 * IPAM now supports fixed MAC addresses.
476 * Support for source IP address based routing.
478 - New --ovs option to also print OpenFlow flows.
479 - put_dhcp_opts and put_dhcp_optsv6 actions may now be traced.
480 * Support for managing SSL and remote connection configuration in
481 northbound and southbound databases.
482 * TCP connections to northbound and southbound databases are no
483 longer enabled by default and must be explicitly configured.
484 See documentation for ovn-sbctl/ovn-nbctl "set-connection"
485 command or the ovn-ctl "--db-sb-create-insecure-remote" and
486 "--db-nb-create-insecure-remote" command-line options for
487 information regarding remote connection configuration.
488 * New appctl "inject-pkt" command in ovn-controller that allows
489 packets to be injected into the connected OVS instance.
490 * Distributed logical routers may now be connected directly to
491 logical switches with localnet ports, by specifying a
492 "redirect-chassis" on the distributed gateway port of the
493 logical router. NAT rules may be specified directly on the
494 distributed logical router, and are handled either centrally on
495 the "redirect-chassis", or in many cases are handled locally on
496 the hypervisor where the corresponding logical port resides.
497 Gratuitous ARP for NAT addresses on a distributed logical
498 router is not yet supported, but will be added in a future
500 - Fixed regression in table stats maintenance introduced in OVS
501 2.3.0, wherein the number of OpenFlow table hits and misses was
504 * OFPT_PACKET_OUT messages are now supported in bundles.
505 * A new "selection_method=dp_hash" type for OpenFlow select group
506 bucket selection that uses the datapath computed 5-tuple hash
507 without making datapath flows match the 5-tuple fields, which
508 is useful for more efficient load balancing, for example. This
509 uses the Netronome extension to OpenFlow 1.5+ that allows
510 control over the OpenFlow select groups selection method. See
511 "selection_method" and related options in ovs-ofctl(8) for
513 * The "sample" action now supports "ingress" and "egress" options.
514 * The "ct" action now supports the TFTP ALG where support is available.
515 * New actions "clone" and "ct_clear".
516 * The "meter" action is now supported in the userspace datapath.
518 * 'bundle' command now supports packet-out messages.
519 * New syntax for 'ovs-ofctl packet-out' command, which uses the
520 same string parser as the 'bundle' command. The old 'packet-out'
521 syntax is deprecated and will be removed in a later OVS
523 * New unixctl "ofctl/packet-out" command, which can be used to
524 instruct a flow monitor to issue OpenFlow packet-out messages.
526 * Remote connections can now be made read-only (see ovsdb-server(1)).
528 * TLV mappings for protocols such as Geneve are now segregated on
529 a per-OpenFlow bridge basis rather than globally. (The interface
531 * Removed support for IPsec tunnels.
533 * New option 'n_rxq_desc' and 'n_txq_desc' fields for DPDK interfaces
534 which set the number of rx and tx descriptors to use for the given port.
535 * Support for DPDK v16.11.
536 * Support for rx checksum offload. Refer DPDK HOWTO for details.
537 * Port Hotplug is now supported.
538 * DPDK physical ports can now have arbitrary names. The PCI address of
539 the device must be set using the 'dpdk-devargs' option. Compatibility
540 with the old dpdk<portid> naming scheme is broken, and as such a
541 device will not be available for use until a valid dpdk-devargs is
543 * Virtual DPDK Poll Mode Driver (vdev PMD) support.
544 * Removed experimental tag.
546 * A package upgrade does not automatically restart OVS service.
547 - ovs-vswitchd/ovs-vsctl:
548 * Ports now have a "protected" flag. Protected ports can not forward
549 frames to other protected ports. Unprotected ports can receive and
550 forward frames to protected and other unprotected ports.
551 - ovs-vsctl, ovn-nbctl, ovn-sbctl, vtep-ctl:
552 * Database commands now accept integer ranges, e.g. "set port
553 eth0 trunks=1-10" to enable trunking VLANs 1 to 10.
556 ---------------------
557 - First supported release of OVN. See ovn-architecture(7) for more
560 * New "monitor_cond" "monitor_cond_update" and "update2" extensions to
563 * OpenFlow 1.3+ bundles now expire after 10 seconds since the
564 last time the bundle was either opened, modified, or closed.
565 * OpenFlow 1.3 Extension 230, adding OpenFlow Bundles support, is
567 * OpenFlow 1.3+ bundles are now supported for group mods as well as
568 flow mods and port mods. Both 'atomic' and 'ordered' bundle
569 flags are supported for group mods as well as flow mods.
570 * Internal OpenFlow rule representation for load and set-field
571 actions is now much more memory efficient. For a complex flow
572 table this can reduce rule memory consumption by 40%.
573 * Bundles are now much more memory efficient than in OVS 2.5.
574 Together with memory efficiency improvements in OpenFlow rule
575 representation, the peak OVS resident memory use during a
576 bundle commit for large complex set of flow mods can be only
577 25% of that in OVS 2.5 (4x lower).
578 * OpenFlow 1.1+ OFPT_QUEUE_GET_CONFIG_REQUEST now supports OFPP_ANY.
579 * OpenFlow 1.4+ OFPMP_QUEUE_DESC is now supported.
580 * OpenFlow 1.4+ OFPT_TABLE_STATUS is now supported.
581 * New property-based packet-in message format NXT_PACKET_IN2 with support
582 for arbitrary user-provided data and for serializing flow table
583 traversal into a continuation for later resumption.
584 * New extension message NXT_SET_ASYNC_CONFIG2 to allow OpenFlow 1.4-like
585 control over asynchronous messages in earlier versions of OpenFlow.
586 * New OpenFlow extension NXM_NX_MPLS_TTL to provide access to MPLS TTL.
587 * New output option, output(port=N,max_len=M), to allow truncating a
588 packet to size M bytes when outputting to port N.
589 * New command OFPGC_ADD_OR_MOD for OFPT_GROUP_MOD message that adds a
590 new group or modifies an existing groups
591 * The optional OpenFlow packet buffering feature is deprecated in
592 this release, and will be removed in the next OVS release
593 (2.7). After the change OVS always sends the 'buffer_id' as
594 0xffffffff in packet-in messages and will send an error
595 response if any other value of this field is included in
596 packet-out and flow mod sent by a controller. Controllers are
597 already expected to work properly in cases where the switch can
598 not buffer packets, so this change should not affect existing
600 * New OpenFlow extension NXT_CT_FLUSH_ZONE to flush conntrack zones.
601 - Improved OpenFlow version compatibility for actions:
602 * New OpenFlow extension to support the "group" action in OpenFlow 1.0.
603 * OpenFlow 1.0 "enqueue" action now properly translated to OpenFlow 1.1+.
604 * OpenFlow 1.1 "mod_nw_ecn" and OpenFlow 1.1+ "mod_nw_ttl" actions now
605 properly translated to OpenFlow 1.0.
607 * queue-get-config command now allows a queue ID to be specified.
608 * '--bundle' option can now be used with OpenFlow 1.3 and with group mods.
609 * New "bundle" command allows executing a mixture of flow and group mods
610 as a single atomic transaction.
611 * New option "--color" to produce colorized output for some commands.
612 * New option '--may-create' to use OFPGC_ADD_OR_MOD in mod-group command.
614 * New "sampling_port" option for "sample" action to allow sampling
615 ingress and egress tunnel metadata with IPFIX.
616 * New ovs-ofctl commands "dump-ipfix-bridge" and "dump-ipfix-flow" to
617 dump bridge IPFIX statistics and flow based IPFIX statistics.
618 * New setting other-config:virtual_obs_id to add an arbitrary string
621 * OVS Linux datapath now implements Conntrack NAT action with all
622 supported Linux kernels.
623 * Support for truncate action.
624 * New QoS type "linux-noop" that prevents Open vSwitch from trying to
625 manage QoS for a given port (useful when other software manages QoS).
627 * New option "n_rxq" for PMD interfaces.
628 Old 'other_config:n-dpdk-rxqs' is no longer supported.
629 Not supported by vHost interfaces. For them number of rx and tx queues
630 is applied from connected virtio device.
631 * New 'other_config:pmd-rxq-affinity' field for PMD interfaces, that
632 allows to pin port's rx queues to desired cores.
633 * New appctl command 'dpif-netdev/pmd-rxq-show' to check the port/rxq
635 * Type of log messages from PMD threads changed from INFO to DBG.
636 * QoS functionality with sample egress-policer implementation.
637 * The mechanism for configuring DPDK has changed to use database
638 * Sensible defaults have been introduced for many of the required
639 configuration options
640 * DB entries have been added for many of the DPDK EAL command line
641 arguments. Additional arguments can be passed via the dpdk-extra
643 * Add ingress policing functionality.
644 * PMD threads servicing vHost User ports can now come from the NUMA
645 node that device memory is located on if CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_VHOST_NUMA
647 * Basic connection tracking for the userspace datapath (no ALG,
648 fragmentation or NAT support yet)
649 * Support for DPDK 16.07
650 * Optional support for DPDK pdump enabled.
651 * Jumbo frame support
652 * Remove dpdkvhostcuse port type.
653 * OVS client mode for vHost and vHost reconnect (Requires QEMU 2.7)
654 * 'dpdkvhostuserclient' port type.
655 - Increase number of registers to 16.
656 - ovs-benchmark: This utility has been removed due to lack of use and
659 * New "vlog/close" command.
661 * Added the ability to selectively start the forwarding and database
662 functions (ovs-vswitchd and ovsdb-server, respectively).
664 * Remove max number of sessions limit, to enable connection scaling
667 * Added support for Python 3.4+ in addition to existing support
670 * Introduced SELinux policy package.
671 - Datapath Linux kernel compatibility.
672 * Dropped support for kernel older than 3.10.
673 * Removed VLAN splinters feature.
674 * Datapath supports kernel upto 4.7.
676 * Flow based tunnel match and action can be used for IPv6 address using
677 tun_ipv6_src, tun_ipv6_dst fields.
678 * Added support for IPv6 tunnels, for details checkout FAQ.
679 * Deprecated support for IPsec tunnels ports.
680 - A wrapper script, 'ovs-tcpdump', to easily port-mirror an OVS port and
682 - Introduce --no-self-confinement flag that allows daemons to work with
683 sockets outside their run directory.
684 - ovs-pki: Changed message digest algorithm from SHA-1 to SHA-512 because
685 SHA-1 is no longer secure and some operating systems have started to
686 disable it in OpenSSL.
687 - Add 'mtu_request' column to the Interface table. It can be used to
688 configure the MTU of the ports.
691 - Using openvswitch module in conjunction with upstream Linux tunnels:
692 * When using the openvswitch module distributed with OVS against kernel
693 versions 4.4 to 4.6, the openvswitch module cannot be loaded or used at
694 the same time as "ip_gre".
695 - Conntrack FTP ALGs: When using the openvswitch module distributed with
696 OVS, particular Linux distribution kernels versions may provide diminished
697 functionality. This typically affects active FTP data connections when
698 using "actions=ct(alg=ftp),..." in flow tables. Specifically:
699 * Centos 7.1 kernels (3.10.0-2xx) kernels are unable to correctly set
700 up expectations for FTP data connections in multiple zones,
701 eg "actions=ct(zone=1,alg=ftp),ct(zone=2,alg=ftp),...". Executing the
702 "ct" action for subsequent data connections may fail to determine that
703 the data connection is "related" to an existing connection.
704 * Centos 7.2 kernels (3.10.0-3xx) kernels may not establish FTP ALG state
705 correctly for NATed connections. As a result, flows that perform NAT,
706 eg "actions=ct(nat,ftp=alg,table=1),..." may fail to NAT the packet,
707 and will populate the "ct_state=inv" bit in the flow.
711 ---------------------
712 - Dropped support for Python older than version 2.7. As a consequence,
713 using Open vSwitch 2.5 or later on XenServer 6.5 or earlier (which
714 have Python 2.4) requires first installing Python 2.7.
716 * Group chaining (where one OpenFlow group triggers another) is
718 * OpenFlow 1.4+ "importance" is now considered for flow eviction.
719 * OpenFlow 1.4+ OFPTC_EVICTION is now implemented.
720 * OpenFlow 1.4+ OFPTC_VACANCY_EVENTS is now implemented.
721 * OpenFlow 1.4+ OFPMP_TABLE_DESC is now implemented.
722 * Allow modifying the ICMPv4/ICMPv6 type and code fields.
723 * OpenFlow 1.4+ OFPT_SET_ASYNC_CONFIG and OFPT_GET_ASYNC_CONFIG are
726 * New "out_group" keyword for OpenFlow 1.1+ matching on output group.
728 * Geneve tunnels can now match and set options and the OAM bit.
729 * The nonstandard GRE64 tunnel extension has been dropped.
730 - Support Multicast Listener Discovery (MLDv1 and MLDv2).
731 - Add 'symmetric_l3l4' and 'symmetric_l3l4+udp' hash functions.
732 - sFlow agent now reports tunnel and MPLS structures.
733 - New 'check-system-userspace', 'check-kmod' and 'check-kernel' Makefile
734 targets to run a new system testsuite. These tests can be run inside
735 a Vagrant box. See INSTALL.md for details
736 - Mark --syslog-target argument as deprecated. It will be removed in
737 the next OVS release.
738 - Added --user option to all daemons
739 - Add support for connection tracking through the new "ct" action
740 and "ct_state"/"ct_zone"/"ct_mark"/"ct_label" match fields. Only
741 available on Linux kernels with the connection tracking module loaded.
742 - Add experimental version of OVN. OVN, the Open Virtual Network, is a
743 system to support virtual network abstraction. OVN complements the
744 existing capabilities of OVS to add native support for virtual network
745 abstractions, such as virtual L2 and L3 overlays and security groups.
747 * DPDK ports may now be created via network scripts (see README.RHEL).
750 * Added multiqueue support to vhost-user
751 * Note: QEMU 2.5+ required for multiqueue support
754 ---------------------
755 - Flow table modifications are now atomic, meaning that each packet
756 now sees a coherent version of the OpenFlow pipeline. For
757 example, if a controller removes all flows with a single OpenFlow
758 "flow_mod", no packet sees an intermediate version of the OpenFlow
759 pipeline where only some of the flows have been deleted.
760 - Added support for SFQ, FQ_CoDel and CoDel qdiscs.
761 - Add bash command-line completion support for ovs-vsctl Please check
762 utilities/ovs-command-compgen.INSTALL.md for how to use.
763 - The MAC learning feature now includes per-port fairness to mitigate
764 MAC flooding attacks.
765 - New support for a "conjunctive match" OpenFlow extension, which
766 allows constructing OpenFlow matches of the form "field1 in
767 {a,b,c...} AND field2 in {d,e,f...}" and generalizations. For details,
768 see documentation for the "conjunction" action in ovs-ofctl(8).
769 - Add bash command-line completion support for ovs-appctl/ovs-dpctl/
770 ovs-ofctl/ovsdb-tool commands. Please check
771 utilities/ovs-command-compgen.INSTALL.md for how to use.
772 - The "learn" action supports a new flag "delete_learned" that causes
773 the learned flows to be deleted when the flow with the "learn" action
775 - Basic support for the Geneve tunneling protocol. It is not yet
776 possible to generate or match options. This is planned for a future
777 release. The protocol is documented at
778 http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-gross-geneve-00
779 - The OVS database now reports controller rate limiting statistics.
780 - sflow now exports information about LACP-based bonds, port names, and
781 OpenFlow port numbers, as well as datapath performance counters.
782 - ovs-dpctl functionality is now available for datapaths integrated
783 into ovs-vswitchd, via ovs-appctl. Some existing ovs-appctl
784 commands are now redundant and will be removed in a future
785 release. See ovs-vswitchd(8) for details.
787 * OpenFlow 1.4 bundles are now supported for flow mods and port
788 mods. For flow mods, both 'atomic' and 'ordered' bundle flags
789 are trivially supported, as all bundled messages are executed
790 in the order they were added and all flow table modifications
791 are now atomic to the datapath. Port mods may not appear in
792 atomic bundles, as port status modifications are not atomic.
793 * IPv6 flow label and neighbor discovery fields are now modifiable.
794 * OpenFlow 1.5 extended registers are now supported.
795 * The OpenFlow 1.5 actset_output field is now supported.
796 * OpenFlow 1.5 Copy-Field action is now supported.
797 * OpenFlow 1.5 masked Set-Field action is now supported.
798 * OpenFlow 1.3+ table features requests are now supported (read-only).
799 * Nicira extension "move" actions may now be included in action sets.
800 * "resubmit" actions may now be included in action sets. The resubmit
801 is executed last, and only if the action set has no "output" or "group"
803 * OpenFlow 1.4+ flow "importance" is now maintained in the flow table.
804 * A new Netronome extension to OpenFlow 1.5+ allows control over the
805 fields hashed for OpenFlow select groups. See "selection_method" and
806 related options in ovs-ofctl(8) for details.
807 - ovs-ofctl has a new '--bundle' option that makes the flow mod commands
808 ('add-flow', 'add-flows', 'mod-flows', 'del-flows', and 'replace-flows')
809 use an OpenFlow 1.4 bundle to operate the modifications as a single
810 atomic transaction. If any of the flow mods in a transaction fail, none
811 of them are executed. All flow mods in a bundle appear to datapath
812 lookups simultaneously.
813 - ovs-ofctl 'add-flow' and 'add-flows' commands now accept arbitrary flow
814 mods as an input by allowing the flow specification to start with an
815 explicit 'add', 'modify', 'modify_strict', 'delete', or 'delete_strict'
816 keyword. A missing keyword is treated as 'add', so this is fully
817 backwards compatible. With the new '--bundle' option all the flow mods
818 are executed as a single atomic transaction using an OpenFlow 1.4 bundle.
819 - ovs-pki: Changed message digest algorithm from MD5 to SHA-1 because
820 MD5 is no longer secure and some operating systems have started to disable
822 - ovsdb-server: New OVSDB protocol extension allows inequality tests on
823 "optional scalar" columns. See ovsdb-server(1) for details.
824 - ovs-vsctl now permits immutable columns in a new row to be modified in
825 the same transaction that creates the row.
826 - test-controller has been renamed ovs-testcontroller at request of users
827 who find it useful for testing basic OpenFlow setups. It is still not
828 a necessary or desirable part of most Open vSwitch deployments.
829 - Support for travis-ci.org based continuous integration builds has been
830 added. Build failures are reported to build@openvswitch.org. See INSTALL.md
831 file for additional details.
832 - Support for the Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (IEEE 802.1D-2004).
833 The implementation has been tested successfully against the Ixia Automated
834 Network Validation Library (ANVL).
835 - Stats are no longer updated on fake bond interface.
836 - Keep active bond slave selection across OVS restart.
837 - A simple wrapper script, 'ovs-docker', to integrate OVS with Docker
838 containers. If and when there is a native integration of Open vSwitch
839 with Docker, the wrapper script will be retired.
840 - Added support for DPDK Tunneling. VXLAN, GRE, and Geneve are supported
841 protocols. This is generic tunneling mechanism for userspace datapath.
842 - Support for multicast snooping (IGMPv1, IGMPv2 and IGMPv3)
843 - Support for Linux kernels up to 4.0.x
844 - The documentation now use the term 'destination' to mean one of syslog,
845 console or file for vlog logging instead of the previously used term
847 - Support for VXLAN Group Policy extension
848 - Initial support for the IETF Auto-Attach SPBM draft standard. This
849 contains rudimentary support for the LLDP protocol as needed for
851 - The default OpenFlow and OVSDB ports are now the IANA-assigned
852 numbers. OpenFlow is 6653 and OVSDB is 6640.
853 - Support for DPDK vHost.
854 - Support for outer UDP checksums in Geneve and VXLAN.
855 - The kernel vports with dependencies are no longer part of the overall
856 openvswitch.ko but built and loaded automatically as individual kernel
857 modules (vport-*.ko).
858 - Support for STT tunneling.
859 - ovs-sim: New developer tool for simulating multiple OVS instances.
860 See ovs-sim(1) for more information.
861 - Support to configure method (--syslog-method argument) that determines
862 how daemons will talk with syslog.
863 - Support for "ovs-appctl vlog/list-pattern" command that lets to query
864 logging message format for each destination.
868 ---------------------
869 - OpenFlow 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 are now enabled by default in
871 - Linux kernel datapath now has an exact match cache optimizing the
872 flow matching process.
873 - Datapath flows now have partially wildcarded tranport port field
874 matches. This reduces userspace upcalls, but increases the
875 number of different masks in the datapath. The kernel datapath
876 exact match cache removes the overhead of matching the incoming
877 packets with the larger number of masks, but when paired with an
878 older kernel module, some workloads may perform worse with the
880 - Compatibility with autoconf 2.63 (previously >=2.64)
882 v2.2.0 - Internal Release
883 ---------------------
884 - Internal ports are no longer brought up by default, because it
885 should be an administrator task to bring up devices as they are
887 - ovs-vsctl now reports when ovs-vswitchd fails to create a new port or
889 - Port creation and configuration errors are now stored in a new error
890 column of the Interface table and included in 'ovs-vsctl show'.
891 - The "ovsdbmonitor" graphical tool has been removed, because it was
892 poorly maintained and not widely used.
893 - New "check-ryu" Makefile target for running Ryu tests for OpenFlow
894 controllers against Open vSwitch. See INSTALL.md for details.
895 - Added IPFIX support for SCTP flows and templates for ICMPv4/v6 flows.
896 - Upon the receipt of a SIGHUP signal, ovs-vswitchd no longer reopens its
897 log file (it will terminate instead). Please use 'ovs-appctl vlog/reopen'
899 - Support for Linux kernels up to 3.14. From Kernel 3.12 onwards OVS uses
900 tunnel API for GRE and VXLAN.
901 - Added DPDK support.
902 - Added support for custom vlog patterns in Python
906 ---------------------
907 - Address prefix tracking support for flow tables. New columns
908 "prefixes" in OVS-DB table "Flow_Table" controls which packet
909 header fields are used for address prefix tracking. Prefix
910 tracking allows the classifier to skip rules with longer than
911 necessary prefixes, resulting in better wildcarding for datapath
912 flows. Default configuration is to not use any fields for prefix
913 tracking. However, if any flow tables contain both exact matches
914 and masked matches for IP address fields, OVS performance may be
915 increased by using this feature.
916 * As of now, the fields for which prefix lookup can be enabled
917 are: 'tun_id', 'tun_src', 'tun_dst', 'nw_src', 'nw_dst' (or
918 aliases 'ip_src' and 'ip_dst'), 'ipv6_src', and 'ipv6_dst'.
919 (Using this feature for 'tun_id' would only make sense if the
920 tunnel IDs have prefix structure similar to IP addresses.)
921 * There is a maximum number of fields that can be enabled for any
922 one flow table. Currently this limit is 3.
924 $ ovs-vsctl set Bridge br0 flow_tables:0=@N1 -- \
925 --id=@N1 create Flow_Table name=table0
926 $ ovs-vsctl set Bridge br0 flow_tables:1=@N1 -- \
927 --id=@N1 create Flow_Table name=table1
928 $ ovs-vsctl set Flow_Table table0 prefixes=ip_dst,ip_src
929 $ ovs-vsctl set Flow_Table table1 prefixes=[]
930 - TCP flags matching: OVS now supports matching of TCP flags. This
931 has an adverse performance impact when using OVS userspace 1.10
932 or older (no megaflows support) together with the new OVS kernel
933 module. It is recommended that the kernel and userspace modules
934 both are upgraded at the same time.
935 - The default OpenFlow and OVSDB ports will change to
936 IANA-assigned numbers in a future release. Consider updating
937 your installations to specify port numbers instead of using the
940 * The OpenFlow 1.1+ "Write-Actions" instruction is now supported.
941 * OVS limits the OpenFlow port numbers it assigns to port 32767 and
942 below, leaving port numbers above that range free for assignment
944 * ovs-vswitchd now honors changes to the "ofport_request" column
945 in the Interface table by changing the port's OpenFlow port
947 * The Open vSwitch software switch now supports OpenFlow groups.
948 - ovs-vswitchd.conf.db.5 man page will contain graphviz/dot
949 diagram only if graphviz package was installed at the build time.
950 - Support for Linux kernels up to 3.11
952 The "show" command also displays mega flow mask stats.
954 * New command "ofp-parse-pcap" to dump OpenFlow from PCAP files.
955 - ovs-controller has been renamed test-controller. It is no longer
956 packaged or installed by default, because too many users assumed
957 incorrectly that ovs-controller was a necessary or desirable part
958 of an Open vSwitch deployment.
959 - Added vlog option to export to a UDP syslog sink.
961 * The "monitor" command can now monitor all tables in a database,
962 instead of being limited to a single table.
963 - The flow-eviction-threshold has been replaced by the flow-limit which is a
964 hard limit on the number of flows in the datapath. It defaults to 200,000
965 flows. OVS automatically adjusts this number depending on network
967 - Added IPv6 support for active and passive socket communications.
971 ---------------------
972 - The ovs-vswitchd process is no longer single-threaded. Multiple
973 threads are now used to handle flow set up and asynchronous
976 * Experimental support for OpenFlow 1.1 (in addition to 1.2 and
977 1.3, which had experimental support in 1.10).
978 * Experimental protocol support for OpenFlow 1.1+ groups. This
979 does not yet include an implementation in the Open vSwitch
981 * Experimental protocol support for OpenFlow 1.2+ meters. This
982 does not yet include an implementation in the Open vSwitch
984 * New support for matching outer source and destination IP address
985 of tunneled packets, for tunnel ports configured with the newly
986 added "remote_ip=flow" and "local_ip=flow" options.
987 * Support for matching on metadata 'pkt_mark' for interacting with
988 other system components. On Linux this corresponds to the skb
990 * Support matching, rewriting SCTP ports
991 - The Interface table in the database has a new "ifindex" column to
992 report the interface's OS-assigned ifindex.
993 - New "check-oftest" Makefile target for running OFTest against Open
994 vSwitch. See README-OFTest for details.
995 - The flow eviction threshold has been moved to the Open_vSwitch table.
996 - Database names are now mandatory when specifying ovsdb-server options
997 through database paths (e.g. Private key option with the database name
998 should look like "--private-key=db:Open_vSwitch,SSL,private_key").
999 - Added ovs-dev.py, a utility script helpful for Open vSwitch developers.
1000 - Support for Linux kernels up to 3.10
1002 * New "ofp-parse" for printing OpenFlow messages read from a file.
1003 * New commands for OpenFlow 1.1+ groups.
1004 - Added configurable flow caching support to IPFIX exporter.
1005 - Dropped support for Linux pre-2.6.32.
1006 - Log file timestamps and ovsdb commit timestamps are now reported
1007 with millisecond resolution. (Previous versions only reported
1011 v1.11.0 - 28 Aug 2013
1012 ---------------------
1013 - Support for megaflows, which allows wildcarding in the kernel (and
1014 any dpif implementation that supports wildcards). Depending on
1015 the flow table and switch configuration, flow set up rates are
1016 close to the Linux bridge.
1017 - The "tutorial" directory contains a new tutorial for some advanced
1018 Open vSwitch features.
1019 - Stable bond mode has been removed.
1020 - The autopath action has been removed.
1021 - New support for the data encapsulation format of the LISP tunnel
1022 protocol (RFC 6830). An external control plane or manual flow
1023 setup is required for EID-to-RLOC mapping.
1025 * The "dec_mpls_ttl" and "set_mpls_ttl" actions from OpenFlow
1026 1.1 and later are now implemented.
1027 * New "stack" extension for use in actions, to push and pop from
1029 * The "load" and "set_field" actions can now modify the "in_port". (This
1030 allows one to enable output to a flow's input port by setting the
1031 in_port to some unused value, such as OFPP_NONE.)
1033 * New debugging commands "add-flow", "mod-flow", "del-flow".
1034 * "dump-flows" now has a -m option to increase output verbosity.
1035 - In dpif-based bridges, cache action translations, which can improve
1036 flow set up performance by 80% with a complicated flow table.
1037 - New syslog format, prefixed with "ovs|", to be easier to filter.
1038 - RHEL: Removes the default firewall rule that allowed GRE traffic to
1039 pass through. Any users that relied on this automatic firewall hole
1040 will have to manually configure it. The ovs-ctl(8) manpage documents
1041 the "enable-protocol" command that can be used as an alternative.
1042 - New CFM demand mode which uses data traffic to indicate interface
1045 v1.10.0 - 01 May 2013
1046 ---------------------
1047 - Bridge compatibility support has been removed. Any uses that
1048 rely on ovs-brcompatd will have to stick with Open vSwitch 1.9.x
1049 or adapt to native Open vSwitch support (e.g. use ovs-vsctl instead
1051 - The maximum size of the MAC learning table is now configurable.
1052 - With the Linux datapath, packets for new flows are now queued
1053 separately on a per-port basis, so it should no longer be
1054 possible for a large number of new flows arriving on one port to
1055 prevent new flows from being processed on other ports.
1057 * Previously ovs-vsctl would retry connecting to the database forever,
1058 causing it to hang if ovsdb-server was not running. Now, ovs-vsctl
1059 only tries once by default (use --retry to try forever). This change
1060 means that you may want to remove uses of --timeout to avoid hangs
1062 * Many "ovs-vsctl" database commands now accept an --if-exists option.
1063 Please refer to the ovs-vsctl manpage for details.
1065 - Experimental support for newer versions of OpenFlow. See
1066 the "What versions of OpenFlow does Open vSwitch support?"
1067 question in the FAQ for more details.
1068 - The OpenFlow "dp_desc" may now be configured by setting the
1069 value of other-config:dp-desc in the Bridge table.
1070 - It is possible to request the OpenFlow port number with the
1071 "ofport_request" column in the Interface table.
1072 - The NXM flow_removed message now reports the OpenFlow table ID
1073 from which the flow was removed.
1075 - New support for the VXLAN tunnel protocol (see the IETF draft here:
1076 http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-mahalingam-dutt-dcops-vxlan-03).
1077 - Tunneling requires the version of the kernel module paired with
1078 Open vSwitch 1.9.0 or later.
1079 - Inheritance of the Don't Fragment bit in IP tunnels (df_inherit)
1080 is no longer supported.
1081 - Path MTU discovery is no longer supported.
1082 - CAPWAP tunneling support removed.
1083 - Tunnels with multicast destination ports are no longer supported.
1085 - The "dump-flows" and "del-flows" no longer require an argument
1086 if only one datapath exists.
1088 - New "vlog/disable-rate-limit" and "vlog/enable-rate-limit"
1089 commands available allow control over logging rate limits.
1090 - New "dpif/dump-dps", "dpif/show", and "dpif/dump-flows" command
1091 that mimic the equivalent ovs-dpctl commands.
1092 - The ofproto library is now responsible for assigning OpenFlow port
1093 numbers. An ofproto implementation should assign them when
1094 port_construct() is called.
1095 - All dpif-based bridges of a particular type share a common
1096 datapath called "ovs-<type>", e.g. "ovs-system". The ovs-dpctl
1097 commands will now return information on that shared datapath. To
1098 get the equivalent bridge-specific information, use the new
1099 "ovs-appctl dpif/*" commands.
1100 - Backward-incompatible changes:
1101 - Earlier Open vSwitch versions treated ANY as a wildcard in flow
1102 syntax. OpenFlow 1.1 adds a port named ANY, which introduces a
1103 conflict. ANY was rarely used in flow syntax, so we chose to
1104 retire that meaning of ANY in favor of the OpenFlow 1.1 meaning.
1105 - Patch ports no longer require kernel support, so they now work
1106 with FreeBSD and the kernel module built into Linux 3.3 and later.
1107 - New "sample" action.
1110 v1.9.0 - 26 Feb 2013
1111 ------------------------
1113 - Support for ipv6 set action.
1114 - SKB mark matching and setting.
1115 - support for Linux kernels up to 3.8
1116 - FreeBSD is now a supported platform, thanks to code contributions from
1117 Gaetano Catalli, Ed Maste, and Giuseppe Lettieri.
1118 - ovs-bugtool: New --ovs option to report only OVS related information.
1119 - New %t and %T log escapes to identify the subprogram within a
1120 cooperating group of processes or threads that emitted a log message.
1121 The default log patterns now include this information.
1123 - Allow bitwise masking for SHA and THA fields in ARP, SLL and TLL
1124 fields in IPv6 neighbor discovery messages, and IPv6 flow label.
1125 - Adds support for writing to the metadata field for a flow.
1127 - The tunneling code no longer assumes input and output keys are
1128 symmetric. If they are not, PMTUD needs to be disabled for
1129 tunneling to work. Note this only applies to flow-based keys.
1130 - New support for a nonstandard form of GRE that supports a 64-bit key.
1131 - Tunnel Path MTU Discovery default value was set to 'disabled'.
1132 This feature is deprecated and will be removed soon.
1133 - Tunnel header caching removed.
1135 - Commands and actions that accept port numbers now also accept keywords
1136 that represent those ports (such as LOCAL, NONE, and ALL). This is
1137 also the recommended way to specify these ports, for compatibility
1138 with OpenFlow 1.1 and later (which use the OpenFlow 1.0 numbers
1139 for these ports for different purposes).
1141 - Support requesting the port number with the "port_no" option in
1142 the "add-if" command.
1143 - ovs-pki: The "online PKI" features have been removed, along with
1144 the ovs-pki-cgi program that facilitated it, because of some
1145 alarmist insecurity claims. We do not believe that these claims
1146 are true, but because we do not know of any users for this
1147 feature it seems better on balance to remove it. (The ovs-pki-cgi
1148 program was not included in distribution packaging.)
1149 - ovsdb-server now enforces the immutability of immutable columns. This
1150 was not enforced in earlier versions due to an oversight.
1151 - The following features are now deprecated. They will be removed no
1152 earlier than February 2013. Please email dev@openvswitch.org with
1154 - Bridge compatibility.
1156 - The autopath action.
1157 - Interface type "null".
1158 - Numeric values for reserved ports (see "ovs-ofctl" note above).
1159 - Tunnel Path MTU Discovery.
1160 - CAPWAP tunnel support.
1161 - The data in the RARP packets can now be matched in the same way as the
1162 data in ARP packets.
1165 v1.8.0 - 26 Feb 2013
1166 ------------------------
1167 *** Internal only release ***
1168 - New FAQ. Please send updates and additions!
1169 - Authors of controllers, please read the new section titled "Action
1170 Reproduction" in DESIGN, which describes an Open vSwitch change in
1171 behavior in corner cases that may affect some controllers.
1173 - A new test utility that can create L3 tunnel between two Open
1174 vSwitches and detect connectivity issues.
1176 - New --sort and --rsort options for "dump-flows" command.
1177 - "mod-port" command can now control all OpenFlow config flags.
1179 - Allow general bitwise masking for IPv4 and IPv6 addresses in
1180 IPv4, IPv6, and ARP packets. (Previously, only CIDR masks
1182 - Allow support for arbitrary Ethernet masks. (Previously, only
1183 the multicast bit in the destination address could be individually
1185 - New field OXM_OF_METADATA, to align with OpenFlow 1.1.
1186 - The OFPST_QUEUE request now reports an error if a specified port or
1187 queue does not exist, or for requests for a specific queue on all
1188 ports, if the specified queue does not exist on any port. (Previous
1189 versions generally reported an empty set of results.)
1190 - New "flow monitor" feature to allow controllers to be notified of
1191 flow table changes as they happen.
1192 - Additional protocols are not mirrored and dropped when forward-bpdu is
1193 false. For a full list, see the ovs-vswitchd.conf.db man page.
1194 - Open vSwitch now sends RARP packets in situations where it previously
1195 sent a custom protocol, making it consistent with behavior of QEMU and
1197 - All Open vSwitch programs and log files now show timestamps in UTC,
1198 instead the local timezone, by default.
1201 v1.7.0 - 30 Jul 2012
1202 ------------------------
1203 - kernel modules are renamed. openvswitch_mod.ko is now
1204 openvswitch.ko and brcompat_mod.ko is now brcompat.ko.
1205 - Increased the number of NXM registers to 8.
1206 - Added ability to configure DSCP setting for manager and controller
1207 connections. By default, these connections have a DSCP value of
1208 Internetwork Control (0xc0).
1209 - Added the granular link health statistics, 'cfm_health', to an
1212 - Added support to mask nd_target for ICMPv6 neighbor discovery flows.
1213 - Added support for OpenFlow 1.3 port description (OFPMP_PORT_DESC)
1216 - Added the "dump-ports-desc" command to retrieve port
1217 information using the new port description multipart messages.
1219 - Added support for spawning ovs-test server from the client.
1220 - Now ovs-test is able to automatically create test bridges and ports.
1221 - "ovs-dpctl dump-flows" now prints observed TCP flags in TCP flows.
1222 - Tripled flow setup performance.
1223 - The "coverage/log" command previously available through ovs-appctl
1224 has been replaced by "coverage/show". The new command replies with
1225 coverage counter values, instead of logging them.
1228 v1.6.1 - 25 Jun 2012
1229 ------------------------
1230 - Allow OFPP_CONTROLLER as the in_port for packet-out messages.
1233 v1.6.0 - 24 Feb 2012
1234 ------------------------
1235 *** Internal only release ***
1237 - LACP bonds no longer fall back to balance-slb when negotiations fail.
1238 Instead they drop traffic.
1239 - The default bond_mode changed from SLB to active-backup, to protect
1240 unsuspecting users from the significant risks of SLB bonds (which are
1241 documented in vswitchd/INTERNALS).
1242 - Load balancing can be disabled by setting the bond-rebalance-interval
1245 - Added support for bitwise matching on TCP and UDP ports.
1246 See ovs-ofctl(8) for more information.
1247 - NXM flow dumps now include times elapsed toward idle and hard
1249 - Added an OpenFlow extension NXT_SET_ASYNC_CONFIG that allows
1250 controllers more precise control over which OpenFlow messages they
1251 receive asynchronously.
1252 - New "fin_timeout" action.
1253 - Added "fin_timeout" support to "learn" action.
1254 - New Nicira action NXAST_CONTROLLER that offers additional features
1255 over output to OFPP_CONTROLLER.
1256 - When QoS settings for an interface do not configure a default queue
1257 (queue 0), Open vSwitch now uses a default configuration for that
1258 queue, instead of dropping all packets as in previous versions.
1260 - Logging to console and file will have UTC timestamp as a default for
1261 all the daemons. An example of the default format is
1262 2012-01-27T16:35:17Z. ovs-appctl can be used to change the default
1264 - The syntax of commands and options to set log levels was simplified,
1265 to make it easier to remember.
1266 - New support for limiting the number of flows in an OpenFlow flow
1267 table, with configurable policy for evicting flows upon
1268 overflow. See the Flow_Table table in ovs-vswitch.conf.db(5)
1269 for more information.
1270 - New "enable-async-messages" column in the Controller table. If set to
1271 false, OpenFlow connections to the controller will initially have all
1272 asynchronous messages disabled, overriding normal OpenFlow behavior.
1273 - ofproto-provider interface:
1274 - "struct rule" has a new member "used" that ofproto implementations
1275 should maintain by updating with ofproto_rule_update_used().
1277 - The new option --timestamp causes the "monitor" command to print
1278 a timestamp with every update.
1279 - CFM module CCM broadcasts can now be tagged with an 802.1p priority.
1282 v1.5.0 - 01 Jun 2012
1283 ------------------------
1285 - Added support for querying, modifying, and deleting flows
1286 based on flow cookie when using NXM.
1287 - Added new NXM_PACKET_IN format.
1288 - Added new NXAST_DEC_TTL action.
1290 - Added daemonization support to the monitor and snoop commands.
1292 - The "find" command supports new set relational operators
1293 {=}, {!=}, {<}, {>}, {<=}, and {>=}.
1294 - ovsdb-tool now uses the typical database and schema installation
1295 directories as defaults.
1296 - The default MAC learning timeout has been increased from 60 seconds
1297 to 300 seconds. The MAC learning timeout is now configurable.
1300 v1.4.0 - 30 Jan 2012
1301 ------------------------
1302 - Compatible with Open vSwitch kernel module included in Linux 3.3.
1303 - New "VLAN splinters" feature to work around buggy device drivers
1304 in old Linux versions. (This feature is deprecated. When
1305 broken device drivers are no longer in widespread use, we will
1306 delete this feature.) See ovs-vswitchd.conf.db(5) for more
1309 - Added ability to match on IPv6 flow label through NXM.
1310 - Added ability to match on ECN bits in IPv4 and IPv6 through NXM.
1311 - Added ability to match on TTL in IPv4 and IPv6 through NXM.
1312 - Added ability to modify ECN bits in IPv4.
1313 - Added ability to modify TTL in IPv4.
1315 - Don't require the "normal" action to use mirrors. Traffic will
1316 now be properly mirrored for any flows, regardless of their
1318 - Track packet and byte statistics sent on mirrors.
1319 - The sFlow implementation can now usually infer the correct agent
1320 device instead of having to be told explicitly.
1322 - New "fdb/flush" command to flush bridge's MAC learning table.
1324 - A new distributed testing tool that allows one to diagnose performance
1325 and connectivity issues. This tool currently is not included in RH or
1327 - RHEL packaging now supports integration with Red Hat network scripts.
1329 - Post 1.4.*, OVS will be changing the default bond mode from balance-slb
1330 to active-backup. SLB bonds carry significant risks with them
1331 (documented vswitchd/INTERNALS) which we want to prevent unsuspecting
1332 users from running into. Users are advised to update any scripts or
1333 configuration which may be negatively impacted by explicitly setting
1334 the bond mode which they want to use.
1337 v1.3.0 - 09 Dec 2011
1338 ------------------------
1340 - Added an OpenFlow extension which allows the "output" action to accept
1342 - Added an OpenFlow extension for flexible learning.
1343 - Bumped number of NXM registers from four to five.
1345 - New "version" command to determine version of running daemon.
1346 - If no argument is provided for "cfm/show", displays detailed
1347 information about all interfaces with CFM enabled.
1348 - If no argument is provided for "lacp/show", displays detailed
1349 information about all ports with LACP enabled.
1351 - New "set-if" command to modify a datapath port's configuration.
1353 - The software switch now supports 255 OpenFlow tables, instead
1354 of just one. By default, only table 0 is consulted, but the
1355 new NXAST_RESUBMIT_TABLE action can look up in additional
1356 tables. Tables 128 and above are reserved for use by the
1357 switch itself; please use only tables 0 through 127.
1358 - Add support for 802.1D spanning tree (STP).
1359 - Fragment handling extensions:
1360 - New OFPC_FRAG_NX_MATCH fragment handling mode, in which L4
1361 fields are made available for matching in fragments with
1363 - New NXM_NX_IP_FRAG match field for matching IP fragments (usable
1364 via "ip_frag" in ovs-ofctl).
1365 - New ovs-ofctl "get-frags" and "set-frags" commands to get and set
1366 fragment handling policy.
1367 - CAPWAP tunneling now supports an extension to transport a 64-bit key.
1368 By default it remains compatible with the old version and other
1369 standards-based implementations.
1370 - Flow setups are now processed in a round-robin manner across ports
1371 to prevent any single client from monopolizing the CPU and conducting
1372 a denial of service attack.
1373 - Added support for native VLAN tagging. A new "vlan_mode"
1374 parameter can be set for "port". Possible values: "access",
1375 "trunk", "native-tagged" and "native-untagged".
1376 - test-openflowd has been removed. Please use ovs-vswitchd instead.
1378 v1.2.0 - 03 Aug 2011
1379 ------------------------
1380 - New "ofproto" abstraction layer to ease porting to hardware
1382 - Packaging for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 and 6.0.
1383 - Datapath support for Linux kernels up to 3.0.
1385 - New "bundle" and "bundle_load" action extensions.
1387 - Implement table unique constraints.
1388 - Support cooperative locking between callers.
1390 - New "-s" option for "show" command prints packet and byte
1391 counters for each port.
1393 - New "--readd" option for "replace-flows".
1395 - New "show" command to print an overview of configuration.
1396 - New "comment" command to add remark that explains intentions.
1397 - ovs-brcompatd has been rewritten to fix long-standing bugs.
1398 - ovs-openflowd has been renamed test-openflowd and moved into the
1399 tests directory. Its presence confused too many users. Please
1400 use ovs-vswitchd instead.
1401 - New ovs-benchmark utility to test flow setup performance.
1402 - A new log level "off" has been added. Configuring a log facility
1403 "off" prevents any messages from being logged to it. Previously,
1404 "emer" was effectively "off" because no messages were ever logged at
1405 level "emer". Now, errors that cause a process to exit are logged
1407 - "configure" option --with-l26 has been renamed --with-linux, and
1408 --with-l26-source has been renamed --with-linux-source. The old
1409 names will be removed after the next release, so please update
1411 - The "-2.6" suffix has been dropped from the datapath/linux-2.6 and
1412 datapath/linux-2.6/compat-2.6 directories.
1414 - Dropped support for "tun_id_from_cookie" OpenFlow extension.
1415 Please use the extensible match extensions instead.
1416 - Removed the Maintenance_Point and Monitor tables in an effort
1417 to simplify 802.1ag configuration.
1418 - Performance and scalability improvements
1421 v1.1.0 - 05 Apr 2011
1422 ------------------------
1423 - Ability to define policies over IPv6
1426 - Support for extensible match extensions to OpenFlow
1428 - Support for HFSC qdisc.
1429 - Queue used by in-band control can now be configured.
1431 - Kernel<->userspace interface has been reworked and should be
1432 close to a stable ABI now.
1433 - "Port group" concept has been dropped.
1434 - GRE over IPSEC tunnels
1436 - New active backup bonding mode.
1437 - New L4 hashing support when LACP is enabled.
1438 - Source MAC hash now includes VLAN field also.
1440 - Greatly improved handling of large flow tables
1442 - "show" command now prints full vport configuration.
1443 - "dump-groups" command removed since kernel support for
1444 port groups was dropped.
1446 - New commands for working with the new Managers table.
1447 - "list" command enhanced with new formatting options and --columns
1449 - "get" command now accepts new --id option.
1450 - New "find" command.
1452 - New "queue-stats" command for printing queue stats.
1453 - New commands "replace-flows" and "diff-flows".
1454 - Commands to add and remove flows can now read from files.
1455 - New --flow-format option to enable or disable NXM.
1456 - New --more option to increase OpenFlow message verbosity.
1457 - Removed "tun-cookie" command, which is no longer useful.
1458 - ovs-controller enhancements for testing various features.
1459 - New ovs-vlan-test command for testing for Linux kernel driver VLAN
1460 bugs. New ovs-vlan-bug-workaround command for enabling and
1461 disabling a workaround for these driver bugs.
1463 - "Resubmit" actions now update flow statistics.
1464 - New "register" extension for use in matching and actions, via NXM.
1465 - New "multipath" experimental action extension.
1466 - New support for matching multicast Ethernet frames, via NXM.
1467 - New extension for OpenFlow vendor error codes.
1468 - New extension to set the QoS output queue without actually
1469 sending to an output port.
1470 - Open vSwitch now reports a single flow table, instead of
1471 separate hash and wildcard tables. This better models the
1472 current implementation.
1473 - New experimental "note" action.
1474 - New "ofproto/trace" ovs-appctl command and associated utilities
1475 to ease debugging complex flow tables.
1477 - Schema documentation now includes an entity-relationship diagram.
1478 - The database is now garbage collected. In most tables,
1479 unreferenced rows will be deleted automatically.
1480 - Many tables now include statistics updated periodically by
1481 ovs-vswitchd or ovsdb-server.
1482 - Every table now has an "external-ids" column for use by OVS
1484 - There is no default controller anymore. Each bridge must have its
1485 controller individually specified.
1486 - The "fail-mode" is now a property of a Bridge instead of a Controller.
1487 - New versioning and checksum features.
1488 - New Managers table and manager_options column in Open_vSwitch table
1489 for specifying managers. The old "managers" column in the
1490 Open_vSwitch table has been removed.
1491 - Many "name" columns are now immutable.
1493 - Dropped support for XenServer pre-5.6.100.
1494 - Dropped support for Linux pre-2.6.18.
1495 - Dropped controller discovery support.
1496 - Dropped "ovs-ofctl status" and the OpenFlow extension that it used.
1497 Statistics reporting in the database is a rough equivalent.
1498 - Dropped the "corekeeper" package (now separate, at
1499 http://openvswitch.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=corekeeper).
1500 - Performance and scalability improvements
1503 v1.1.0pre2 - 13 Sep 2010
1504 ------------------------
1507 v1.1.0pre1 - 31 Aug 2010
1508 ------------------------
1509 - OpenFlow 1.0 slicing (QoS) functionality
1510 - Python bindings for configuration database (no write support)
1511 - Performance and scalability improvements
1514 v1.0.1 - 31 May 2010
1515 --------------------
1516 - New "patch" interface type
1519 v1.0.0 - 15 May 2010
1520 --------------------
1521 - Configuration database with remote management
1524 - Support for XenServer 5.5 and 5.6
1525 - Performance and scalability improvements
1528 v0.99.2 - 18 Feb 2010
1529 ---------------------
1532 v0.99.1 - 25 Jan 2010
1533 ---------------------
1534 - Add support for sFlow(R)
1535 - Make headers compatible with C++
1538 v0.99.0 - 14 Jan 2010
1539 ---------------------
1540 - User-space forwarding engine
1543 v0.90.7 - 29 Nov 2009
1544 ---------------------
1545 - Add support for NetFlow active timeouts
1548 v0.90.6 - 6 Oct 2009
1549 --------------------
1552 v0.90.5 - 21 Sep 2009
1553 ---------------------
1554 - Generalize in-band control to more diverse network setups
projects / ovs.git / blob