Clearview: Network Interface Coherence

Clearview is a project to rationalize, unify, and enhance the way network
interfaces are handled in Solaris at the programmatic and administrative
levels.  While this sounds a bit opaque, the effects of ensuring that all network
interfaces have these attributes are far-reaching and eminently practical.
For example, as a result of the Clearview project, customers will be able to: 

• Observe all IP layer network traffic, including loopback, IPMP group and IP tunnel traffic.
• Observe all IP layer network traffic flowing to and from a zone.
• Administrate all network interfaces using dladm(1M). 
• Use VLANs and form link aggregations on all Ethernet devices. 
• Use IPMP with technologies such as DHCP and routing protocols. 
• Select names for network interfaces, easing migration of network      configuration information between systems or zones, and markedly improving Dynamic Reconfiguration.

... and more.

This short presentation gives an overview of the
projects goals, the specific architectural problems it aims to solve, and the   components that make up the solution.

This illustration shows the relationships between links and interfaces on the software layer of the networking stack, as well as with associated devices on the hardware layer. The drawing also shows how features of the Clearview project, such as vanity naming and IPMP rearchitecture, would be implemented in future networking scenarios. 

We are now hard at work on designing and implementing the key components of project Clearview that deliver the capabilities listed above.  These components are:

• IPMP Rearchitecture [integrated in Solaris Nevada build 107]
• IP Tunneling Device Driver [integrated in Solaris Nevada build 125]
• Nemo Unification and Vanity Naming (UV) [integrated into Solaris Nevada build 83]
• IP-Level Observability Devices [integrated in Solaris Nevada build 103]

In order to complete these components, the following supporting work is included in the list of deliverables for the project:

• Public DLPI API [integrated into Solaris Nevada build 75]
• Nemo MAC-Type Plugin Architecture [integrated into Solaris Nevada build 44] 
• Snoop Filtering of VLAN-Tagged Packets [integrated into Solaris Nevada build 50]

More on each of these components can be found through the links above.  The Clearview project umbrella description is useful for understanding how these pieces all fit together.

Please direct any discussion concerning this project to the Clearview discussion list, clearview-discuss@opensolaris.org.