TFS#3 Hackfest

The TFS#3 Hackfest took place in Castelldefels 16-17 October 2023.

Overview

ETSI’s Centre for Testing and Interoperability and the TeraFlowSDN community are organizing the 3rd TFS Hackfest on 16-17 October 2023 Followed by the TFS#3 Ecosystem Day on 18 October. The events will be hosted by CTTC in their premises in Castelldefels, Barcelona, Spain, and co-located with the TFS#3 Plenary on 17 October 2023 (login required)

Participation in ETSI Hackfests & Ecosystem Day is free and open to all upon registration.

Venue

CTTC - Building B4 - Auditorium
Parc Mediterrani de la Tecnologia (PMT)
Av. Carl Friedrich Gauss 7
08860 - Castelldefels
Barcelona, Spain

Scope

This Hackfest will be dedicated to the use of P4 in TeraFlowSDN, starting with an overview of TeraFlowSDN and white box management with P4, followed by a gradual walkthrough of an end-to-end P4 based demo, then more interactive sessions led by key members of the TeraFlowSDN community will take place. Participants will be able to build their own hands on experience of P4 forwarding with TeraFlowSDN, including aspects such as deployment, configuration, operation, monitoring, update, etc..


Prerequisites

  • Registration is mandatory!
  • Participants are expected to:
  • Participants will need their laptop, with a Linux and a Kubernetes-based environment installed. A Virtual Machine will be provided with pre-installed material (see Hackfest Material) so that laptop reinstallation is not needed.
    • Even if you already have Linux on your laptop, we recommend preparing a clean working environment based on the VM.

Who should attend

  • Network Operators and Service providers, who want to get first-hand operational experience with TeraFlowSDN Controller
  • System Integrators, who want to develop their expertise with TeraFlowSDN
  • Academia and Universities, who are using or considering TeraFlowSDN as a platform for their research activities in networking
  • TeraFlowSDN developers and users that want to share and test with the community
  • Members of other research projects interested in using TeraFlowSDN Controller in their research and proof-of-concept activities.

Agenda

Monday, 16 October 2023 - 2:00-6:00 pm

101

P4

  • 15h30 Coffee Break (sponsored by HE SNS ACROSS)
  • Walkthrough of a complete P4-based demo
    • TeraFlowSDN installation
    • Mininet topology setup
    • Register devices/service to TFS
    • Monitoring setup
    • Monitoring visualization
    • Policy deployment

Walkthrough

Tuesday, 17 October 2023 - 9:00 am - 6:00 pm

  • Welcome Day 2
  • Interactive Hacking Session #1
    • TeraFlowSDN protobuf files
    • Writing monitoring probes
    • Objective 1: Create a new monitoring probe in python
    • Objective 2: Measure packet loss, report to TFS, and create policy

Hack1

  • 10h30 Coffee Break (sponsored by HE SNS ACROSS)
  • Hacking the Day 1 P4-based demo
  • Lunch break (self-paid)
  • Interactive Hacking Session #2
    • Quick P4 tutorial
    • Toy case for P4 telemetry
    • Implementation
      • Exercise #1
      • Exercise #2

Hack2

  • 15h30 Coffee Break (sponsored by HE SNS ACROSS)
  • Future Work
    • Introduction to P4-based In-band Network Telemetry (INT)
      • INT Terminology
      • INT Approaches
        • INT XD
        • INT MX
        • INT MD
      • What to monitor with INT
    • Required ETSI TFS extensions to support INT
      • Call for action
  • Wrap-up Day 2 & end of Hackfest

Wednesday, 18 October 2023 - 10:00 am - 17:00 pm

  • The TFS Hackfest will be followed by the TFS Ecosystem Day on Oct 18, see details here

Networking Dinner, Wednesday 18 October 2023 - 8:00 pm

  • We are organizing an TFS & OSL networking dinner on Wednesday 18 October after the TFS#3 Ecosystem Day. Dinner will be self-funded (~45 EUR) and will take place at Restaurante Amar, in Castelldefels at 8 pm

Hackfest Material

  • NEW TFS Hackfest 3 VM (15 GB) Gdrive
    • The VM has been created with VirtualBox 6.1; however, newer versions should also work
    • Minimum requirements: 4 vCPU cores, 6 GB of RAM, 50 GB of storage.
    • The above requirements are needed to run the experiments. If your PC can handle it, feel free to scale up the VM. For example 8GB will certainly help your experience.
    • No Graphical User Interface is installed to reduce the CPU and memory consumed, as well as the size of the disk.
    • The VM must be connected to a NAT Network with exposed ports 22 and 80, similar to how it is described in the wiki
  • During the Hackfest we will connect through SSH to the machine. If you operate Windows, make sure that you have some software like MobaXterm or WSL that can initiate SSH connections. Additionally we will use VSCode and its Remote Development Extension to make it easier to view and edit files. Finally we will need to send some gRPC requests; for that we will use a gRPC client like Kreya or Postman. The grpcurl tool will be used that will be included in the VM.
    • Links for the software needed in your host:
    • The VM has pre-installed software:
      • MicroK8s with the required addons (a subset of those detailed in the guide to keep the VM lighter)
      • Mininet in docker format and useful tools from ng-sdn tutorial
      • TeraFlowSDN Release 2.1 with adaptations for the hackfest
    • The credentials for accessing the VM are: user=teraflow / pass=tfs123

Get involved in ETSI TeraFlowSDN

Contact

Please send your technical questions to TFS_TECH@list.etsi.org or join the TFS Community Slack Workspace

Questions about ETSI, joining TFS, this and future events can be sent to: SDGsupport@etsi.org