moby / moby/libnetwork

Overlay Network L2 Support

Open
#1,717 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
Go
Stars
2.2k
Forks
875
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

Add capability to create Layer 2 overlay networks.

Related: https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/32531

Requirements for L2 networking:

  • Add a configuration option to the overlay network to enable "L2 mode". (proposing --subnet=none)
  • Do not assign a subnet or default gateway to the network, or to container interfaces.
  • By default, do not assign an IP address (v4 or v6) to interfaces.
  • Ensure promiscuous mode is enabled on every interface.
  • Forward all packets sent to one of this network's interfaces to every other interface.
    (This would work, but will cause performance loss in networks with more than two containers.)
  • Forward ARP/DHCP/broadcast packets sent to one of this network's interfaces to every other interface.
    • Beware switching loops! Broadcast packets must only reach each interface once.
  • Use virtual switches/linux bridges to proactively learn what IPs are available at which destinations. L2 services running in containers may forward packets from external IPs, the overlay network should handle these transparently.

Effectively, we want to use a virtual switch/linux bridge to learn the network topology, rather than trusting docker to know everything about the network topology.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are identified. Start by reading the related Docker issue and the existing overlay-network implementation, then determine how the stated L2 requirements fit together, including loop-safe broadcast forwarding and topology learning. Done means an L2 configuration exists and the listed addressing, promiscuous-mode, forwarding, and switching behaviors work.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
go
Domain
networking
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.