NETCONF

Table of Contents

Contributors

Overview

This section provides an overview on the NETCONF protocol implementation in ONOS.

Interfaces and Classes

• NetconfController.java, implemented by NetconfControllerImpl.java: tracks all the NETCONF devices, serves as a one stop for connecting and obtaining a device and (un)register listeners on device events.

• NetconfDevice.java implemented by NetconfDeviceImpl.java: represents a NETCONF capable device connected to the ONOS core with his own NetconfSession and his informations saved in an instance of NetconfDeviceInfo
• NetconfSession.java: interface that every type of transport connection to a NETCONF device must implement, represents the single access point for any operation on the device. An example is NetconfSessionImpl: uses an SSH2 Connection and Session to exchange information and perform operations like get/set-config with the physical NETCONF device.
• NetconfSessionDelegate.java delegate interface implemented by NetconfSessionDelegateImpl in NetconfSessionImpl. Serves the purpose of completing the future returned by the thread so the session can return the correct reply for the specifi request to the caller, effectively making the request call blocking on the Future.
• NetconfDeviceProvider.java: manages any NETCONF device role and all the interactions with the ONOS core.
• NetconfDeviceListener.java implemented by InnerNetconfDeviceListener.java in NetconfDeviceProvider: informs the provider in the ONOS core that a NETCONF device is connected/disconnected.
• NetconfDeviceOutputEvent.java represent an output event from a device session's stream, it can be a reply, notification, unregistration from the network, error.
• NetconfDeviceOutputEventListener.java implemented by NetconfDeviceOutputEventListenerImpl.java: interface and implementation of a listener that receives notifications from the device stream: replies, notifications, disconnections and errors. NetconfSession has method to set them to the underling stream handler class, such as NetconfStreamThread.
• NetconfDeviceInfo.java: contains ip,port,protocol,username,password and DeviceId of a NETCONF device; it's used to exchange information about a device without having to pass the device instance itself.
• NetconfException.java represents an exception happened in the NETCONF protocol implementation.
• XMLConfigParser.java: parser for reading and producing XML files to and from the NETCONF device. For now has only configuration reader and edit controllers configuration producer.

Through implementing the NetconfDeviceOutputEventListener.java and adding the listener to the session anybody who needs to obtain device notifications can listen on device generated messages that are picked up by the listeners implementations that is in the set of to be notified listeners in the StreamHandler implementation, right now NetconfStreamThread.java.

Connect your own device to ONOS

If you have your own device that talks NETCONF protocol follow this section, if you don't but want to try ONOS NETCONF implementation out proceed to the Example section.

Once you have your device Running on some IP address and some port, in order to make ONOS see it you should follow these steps. 

• start ONOS

• activate the netconf app :

  onos> app activate org.onosproject.netconf

• if you wrote your own driver for your device activate that specific driver (i.e.) :

  onos> app activate org.onosproject.drivers.fujitsu

• give ONOS the information to connect to the device and which driver to use for you device in a json file. You need to specify username, password, ip and port. If you wrote a specific driver that has also to be changed form the standard "netconf" one.

  {
    "devices":{
      "netconf:<username>@<ip>:<port>":{
        "basic":{
          "driver":"ovs-netconf"
        }
      }
    },
    "apps":{
      "org.onosproject.netconf":{
        "devices":[{
          "name":<username>,
          "password":<password>,
          "ip":<ip>,
          "port":<port>
        }]
      }
    }
  }

  A working example is in $ONOS_ROOT/tools/test/configs/netconf-cfg.json. Change the IP both in the DeviceId at the top and in the devices array. The port number by default on NETCONF is 830, so unless you made any changes to that leave it as is.
  You can also add other information, more than the driver, to the basic device configuration information: "type": "<device-type>", "manufacturer": "<device-manufacturer>","hwVersion": "<hw-version>","swVersion": "<sw-version>".

   

• upload the configuration you just wrote to the instance of ONOS you are running, in our case localhost:

  <your_machine>~$ curl -X POST -H "content-type:application/json" http://localhost:8181/onos/v1/network/configuration -d @<path_to_your_json_configuration_file> --user onos:rocks

  or 

  <your_machine>~$ onos-netcfg localhost <path_to_your_json_configuration_file>

• Check if the device is present in ONOS:

  onos> devices

  should return, among other devices also something like:

  onos> id=netconf:mininet@10.1.9.24:1830, available=true, role=MASTER, type=SWITCH, mfr=unknown, hw=unknown, sw=unknown, serial=unknown, ipaddress=10.1.9.24, driver=ovs-netconf, name=netconf:mininet@10.1.9.24:1830

  If the device is not present the could have been and error and you have to check the logs.

  • for localhost logs

    <your_machine>~$ tl

    or for remote logs

    <your_machine>~$ ol

  • verify that the logs don't contain NETCONF related exceptions and this warning does not appear:

    WARN  | event-dispatch-0 | ListenerRegistry <.....> org.onosproject.netconf.NetconfException: Can't connect to NETCONF device on 10.1.9.24:1830

    In case the log is preset it means that the device was not able to reply on the given IP and Port. Verify Ip and Port in the Json file you posted and retry. If any other exception is present, such as no device name, please read the log and react to it accordingly.

• Once the device is present in ONOS you can interact with it.

Example: Get and Set Controllers.

An example of NETCONF infrastructure usage is getting and setting controllers on a device. These operations are defined in an ONOS Behaviour, in our case the NetconfControllerConfig.java, that implements ControllerConfig general behaviour. To do in the Behaviour operations on the devices, you need the NetconfController, which you can obtain through the DriverHandler. The NetconfController instance now gives you access to all the device or a single device. Once you have the device you are interested in based upon the deviceId you can get the NetconfSession object to comunicate with the device and do operations on the physical devices, like getting the configuration in in the get controllers methods or setting a pre-built new one for the setControllers. XmlConfigParser.java offers a method to extract the desired information from an devices's XML response and another method to produce the correct XML to set one or more controller on a specific device.

You can take a look at the acutal implementation of the get and set controllers operation in the NetconfControllerConfig.java class. For an example of other operations that can be implemented the OVSDB infrastructure provides a good starting point.

To call the getControllers and setControllers methods you need to obtain the ControllerConfig Behaviour nad then call on this instance the methods. The set and get commands are implemented, as an example, in DeviceControllersCommand.java and DeviceSetControllersCommand.java that provide, in two CLI commands

onos> device-controllers

onos> device-setcontrollers

Example: Testing infrastructure

To test locally (not on real switches) the NETCONF implementation you need the Mininet machine with of-config installed (link to mininet machine).

of-config is wrapper for an openvswitch instance, that uses NETCONF protocol and translates it to OVSDB in order to use that database implementation. 

Infrastructure Setup:

• Start the Mininet machine with of-config installed under Virtual-Box

• [Optional] Set a controller with the set controller command. For Example, you will have a different IP for your ONOS instance.

  mininet-vm:~$ sudo ovs-vsctl set-controller ofc-bridge tcp:10.128.12.1:6653 

• Start the ofc-server in the Mininet machine

  mininet-vm:~$ sudo ofc-server -v 3 -f

• start ONOS

• activate the netconf app :

  onos> app activate org.onosproject.netconf

• give ONOS the information to connect to the device and which driver to use for it in the $ONOS_ROOT/tools/test/configs/netconf-cfg.json file. Change the IP both in the DeviceId at the top and in the devices array. The port number by default on NETCONF is 830, so unless you made any changes to that leave it as is.

• upload the configuration you just modified to the instance of ONOS you are running, in our case localhost:

  <your_machine>~$ curl -X POST -H "content-type:application/json" http://localhost:8181/onos/v1/network/configuration -d @$ONOS_ROOT/tools/test/configs/netconf-cfg.json --user onos:rocks

  or 

  <your_machine>~$ onos-netcfg localhost $ONOS_ROOT/tools/test/configs/netconf-cfg.json

• open the onos logs 

  for localhost logs

  <your_machine>~$ tl

  or for remote logs

  <your_machine>~$ ol

• verify that the logs don't contain NETCONF related exceptions and this warning does not appear:

  | WARN | event-dispatch-0 | NetconfDeviceProvider | 186 - org.onosproject.onos-netconf-provider-device - 1.4.0.SNAPSHOT | Can't connect to NETCONF device on <ip>:<port>

  In case the log is preset it means that the device was not able to reply on the given IP and Port. Verify Ip and Port in the Json file you posted and retry. If any other exception is present, such as no device name, please read the log and react to it accordingly.

• Call the command or run the app you have written. For example:

  onos> device-controllers netconf:mininet@10.1.9.24:830

Future Work

There is much room for improvement and testing, this is only a basic skeleton of the infrastructure. The improvement should be focused on extracting the XML that is now encoded in the NetconfSessionImpl's methods and testing each operation. In the future the XML can be generated through YANG models so it can be specific for every type of device we want to connect.