40 lines
1.8 KiB
ReStructuredText
40 lines
1.8 KiB
ReStructuredText
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.. _extensible:
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=============================
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Extensible and Modular Design
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=============================
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* Pluggable, easy to understand & extend
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* Mature graph node architecture
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* Full control to reorganize the pipeline
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* Fast, plugins are equal citizens
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**Modular, Flexible, and Extensible**
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The FD.io VPP packet processing pipeline is decomposed into a ‘packet processing
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graph’. This modular approach means that anyone can ‘plugin’ new graph
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nodes. This makes VPP easily exensible and means that plugins can be
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customized for specific purposes. VPP is also configurable through it's
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Low-Level API.
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.. figure:: /_images/VPP_custom_application_packet_processing_graph.280.jpg
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:alt: Extensible, modular graph node architecture?
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Extensible and modular graph node architecture.
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At runtime, the FD.io VPP platform assembles a vector of packets from RX rings,
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typically up to 256 packets in a single vector. The packet processing graph is
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then applied, node by node (including plugins) to the entire packet vector. The
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received packets typically traverse the packet processing graph nodes in the
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vector, when the network processing represented by each graph node is applied to
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each packet in turn. Graph nodes are small and modular, and loosely
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coupled. This makes it easy to introduce new graph nodes and rewire existing
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graph nodes.
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Plugins are `shared libraries <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_(computing)>`_
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and are loaded at runtime by VPP. VPP find plugins by searching the plugin path
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for libraries, and then dynamically loads each one in turn on startup.
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A plugin can introduce new graph nodes or rearrange the packet processing graph.
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You can build a plugin completely independently of the FD.io VPP source tree,
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which means you can treat it as an independent component.
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