This repository is part of the SD-Fabric project. It provides an ONOS app that abstracts a network of one or more fabric switches as a virtual "One-Big-UPF", which can be integrated with a 4G/5G mobile core control plane.
The UP4 app is essentially a P4Runtime server that translates read and write requests into multiple ONOS API calls for the underlying physical devices. The One-Big-UPF abstraction is defined using a P4 program describing a "virtual UPF pipeline". Such P4 program doesn't run on switches, but it's used as the schema to define the content of the P4Runtime messages that can be exchanged with the UP4 app.
To learn about the architecture, capabilitites, and instructions, including integration with standard 3GPP interfaces such as PFCP, please refer to the official SD-Fabric documentation.
To learn about the origins of the UP4 project and the rationale behind it, check the paper:
R. MacDavid et al. A P4-based 5G User Plane Function, SOSR 2021
To build and test UP4 you will need the following software to be installed on your machine:
- Docker
- make
Docker is used to run the necessary without worrying about additional dependencies. Before starting, make sure to fetch all the required Docker images:
make deps
The directory p4src contains the P4 program defining the virtual UPF pipeline.
To build the P4 program:
make build
To generate the pipeline graphs (in PDF format):
make graph
The directory app contains the Java code for the ONOS app implementation.
To build the app:
make app-build
The app directory has further instructions for loading and testing.
The directory ptf contains unit tests for the virtual UPF P4 program. Tests
use PTF, a Python-based framework for data plane testing, and stratum_bmv2,
the reference P4 software switch (BMv2 simple_switch) built with
Stratum support to provide a P4Runtime and gNMI server interface.
To run all test cases:
make check
ptf/tests contains the actual test case implementation, organized in
groups, e.g., routing.py for all test cases pertaining the routing
functionality, packetio.py for control packet I/O, etc.
To run all tests in a group:
make check TEST=<GROUP>
To run a specific test case:
make check TEST=<GROUP>.<TEST NAME>
For example:
make check TEST=packetio.PacketOutTest
ptf/lib contains the test runner as well as libraries useful to simplify
test case implementation (e.g., helper.py provides a P4Info helper with
methods convenient to construct P4Runtime table entries)
The directory scenarios contains integration test scenarios and scripts to run
a Mininet-based emulated network of BMv2 switches controlled by ONOS and UP4.
Check the included README for more information.