Multicast¶

Trellis supports IP multicast in an classic SDN way.

None of the common IP multicast protocols (e.g. IGMP, PIM) is used when calculating the multicast tree internally.

Instead, benefiting from SDN, Trellis calculates the multicast tree in a centralized way and program the switches accordingly. Having said that, it doesn’t prevent us from using common IP multicast protocols to communicate with externals.

Here’s a summary of multicast features Trellis supports.

Support both IPv4 and IPv6 multicast
Support multi-stage topology
Support dual-homed sinks (with failure recovery)
Support multiple sources

Note

Dual-homed sinks and multiple sources support comes with major changes in the Multicast Routing subsystem.

Sink and sources are now identified by an ONOS HostId (MAC/VLAN) and has associated a number of ConnectPoint while in the past we identified the sinks and the sources just using one ConnectPoint.

Multicast subsystem listen for Host events and according to them modify properly the ConnectPoint associated to the HostId.

In particular, it leverages the Host Location which is a collection of ONOS ConnectPoint where the Host is attached. This information is maintained updated by ONOS thanks to several discovery mechanisms implemented in the Host subsystem. Following image try to summarize the work flow of the Multicast Routing subsystem after the aforementioned changes:

Caution

We should avoid using reserved Multicast groups. Please check here for the reserved values: http://www.iana.org/assignments/multicast-addresses/multicast-addresses.xhtml

Activate Multicast¶

The multicast service need to be activated by the following command:

onos> app activate mcast

You can also add mcast into $ONOS_APPS environment variable such that it gets started automatically every time.

CLI commands¶

Creating a route and adding sinks¶

In order to add a new Multicast route, we have to use mcast-host-join command and we need to provide following information:

source address; 2) group address; 3) sources ; 4) sinks.

Here’s an example:

onos> mcast-host-join -sAddr * -gAddr 224.0.0.1 -srcs 00:AA:00:00:00:01/None -srcs 00:AA:00:00:00:05/None -sinks 00:AA:00:00:00:03/None -sinks 00:CC:00:00:00:01/None

-sAddr: we can provide * for ASM or an IP address for SSM At this time being we do not enforce the matching of the -sAddr on the data plane.
-gAddr specifies Multicast group address
-srcs identifies the source we changed from ConnectPoint to HostId in this release.
-sinks specifies the sinks of the group, we changed from ConnectPoint to HostId in this release.

Removing a sink¶

A sink can be removed through mcast-sink-delete command. The major difference is that the sinks to be removed is provided through -h option.

If -h is not provided the command will issue a route removal.

onos> mcast-sink-delete -sAddr * -gAddr 224.0.0.1 -h 00:AA:00:00:00:03/None

Modifying a source¶

We also provide a command to modify the sources of a Multicast group. In particular mcast-source-delete allows to modify the source connect points of a source. If -src is not provided, the command will issue a route removal

onos> mcast-source-delete -sAddr * -gAddr 224.0.0.1 -src 00:AA:00:00:00:01/None

Removing a route¶

The removal of a route can be achieved in several ways:

removing all sources

onos> mcast-source-delete -sAddr * -gAddr 224.0.0.1 -src 00:AA:00:00:00:01/None -src 00:AA:00:00:00:05/None

not providing -h to the mcast-host-delet command

onos> mcast-sink-delete -sAddr * -gAddr 224.0.0.1

not providing -src option to the mcast-source-delete command.
```
onos> mcast-source-delete -sAddr * -gAddr 224.0.0.1
```

REST APIs¶

You can find the REST API documentation at http://<ONOS-IP>:8181/onos/v1/docs.

Please click the drop down list and select Multicast API.

We configure and implement multicast routes through the dedicated REST API.

Some of the APIs are outlined here, you can find complete list in the ONOS docs page.

The referenced files in these examples can be found in $ONOS_ROOT/apps/mcast/web/src/main/resources/jsonExamples

GET operations¶

Get all routes

$ curl --user onos:rocks -X GET -H 'Accept: application/json' 'http://<controller-ip>:8181/onos/mcast/mcast'

Get a specific route

$ curl --user onos:rocks -X GET -H 'Accept: application/json' 'http://<controller-ip>:8181/onos/mcast/mcast/{group_ip}/{source_ip}/'

Get all source connect point for a route

$ curl --user onos:rocks -X GET -H 'Accept: application/json' 'http://<controller-ip>:8181/onos/mcast/mcast/sources/{group_ip}/{source_ip}/'

Get all sink connect points for a route

$ curl --user onos:rocks -X GET -H 'Accept: application/json' 'http://<controller-ip>:8181/onos/mcast/mcast/sinks/{group_ip}/{source_ip}/'

Get all connect points for a given host Id in a given route

$ curl --user onos:rocks -X GET -H 'Accept: application/json' 'http://<controller-ip>:8181/onos/mcast/mcast'

POST operations¶

Single route post

$ curl --user onos:rocks -X POST -H 'Content-Type:application/json' http://<controller-ip>:8181/onos/mcast/mcast -d@mcastRoute.json

Bulk routes post

$ curl --user onos:rocks -X POST -H 'Content-Type:application/json' http://<controller-ip>:8181/onos/mcast/mcast/bulk -d@mcastRoutes.json

Add a specific set of source connect points to a given route

$ curl --user onos:rocks -X POST -H 'Accept: application/json' 'http://<controller-ip>:8181/onos/mcast/mcast/sources/{group_ip}/{source_ip}/' -d@mcastSources.json

Add a specific set of host Ids as sinks to a given route

$ curl --user onos:rocks -X POST -H 'Accept: application/json' 'http://<controller-ip>:8181/onos/mcast/mcast/sinks/{group_ip}/{source_ip}/' -d@mcastSinks.json

Add a specific set of connect points from a host source for a given route

$ curl --user onos:rocks -X POST -H 'Accept: application/json' 'http://<controller-ip>:8181/onos/mcast/mcast/sources/{group_ip}/{source_ip}/{hostId}' -d@mcastSourcesHostId.json

Add a specific set of connect points from a host sink from a given route

$ curl --user onos:rocks -X POST -H 'Accept: application/json' 'http://<controller-ip>:8181/onos/mcast/mcast/sinks/{group_ip}/{source_ip}/{hostId}' -d@mcastSinksHostId.json

DELETE operations¶

Remove all routes

$ curl --user onos:rocks -X DELETE -H 'Accept: application/json' 'http://<controller-ip>:8181/onos/mcast/mcast'

Bulk route removal

$ curl --user onos:rocks -X DELETE -H 'Content-Type:application/json' http://<controller-ip>:8181/onos/mcast/mcast/bulk -d@mcastRoutes.json

Remove a specific route given group and ip

$ curl --user onos:rocks -X DELETE -H 'Accept: application/json' 'http://<controller-ip>:8181/onos/mcast/mcast/{group_ip}/{source_ip}'

Remove a specific source from a given route

$ curl --user onos:rocks -X DELETE -H 'Accept: application/json' 'http://<controller-ip>:8181/onos/mcast/mcast/sources/{group_ip}/{source_ip}/{host_id}'

Remove a specific sink from a given route

$ curl --user onos:rocks -X DELETE -H 'Accept: application/json' 'http://<controller-ip>:8181/onos/mcast/mcast/sinks/{group_ip}/{source_ip}/{host_id}'

JSON Example¶

Below we find the configuration json for a single multicast route.

{
  "group": "224.0.1.1",
  "source": "*",
  "sources": [
    "00:AA:00:00:00:01/None",
    "00:AA:00:00:00:05/None"
  ],
  "sinks": [
    "00:CC:00:00:00:01/None",
    "00:AA:00:00:00:03/None"
  ]
}

group: IP address of the Multicast Group
source: IP address of the Multicast source. If specified (e.g. 10.0.1.1) we will treat this route as SSM (Single Source Multicast), if instead * is used the route will be ASM (Any Source Multicast)
sources: Array containing the connect points to which the source is connected to.
sinks: Array containing a set of Hosts that we want as sinks of the multicast stream. ONOS will automatically handle the connect points of these hosts if they are single or dual homed.