DASH Workgroup Community Update 1/14/2026

[Kristina Moore]

Hello DASH Open Source Community – thanks for your time on this morning.  Just a reminder that I’m still looking to leverage the Linux Foundation lists more to manage communications.  If you could please take the time to enter your info here, I can proceed with deletion of the sonic-dash@googlegroups list we used when we began the project.

In summary we:

• Reviewed completed and ongoing pull requests, including platform improvements, the unified chassis DB initiative by Vasundhara, and follow-ups on NAT64/IPv6 features with Deven confirming delays.  Marian, Murali , and Ramesh provided input on technical items and review assignments.
• Disable Unwanted Containers PR25032: discussed the importance of the PR to disable unwanted containers on Smart Switch DPUs; emphasized the need for further optimization and Kristina noting its movement from Draft state to Open and readiness for review by Sasha.
• Smart Switch DPU Temperature Test PR21911: highlighted a new thermal test contributed by Nvidia for Smart Switch DPUs, with Ramesh questioning its platform specificity and agreeing to review whether the test is generic or platform-specific.
• @Deven Jagasia from the SDN team offered to pick up the FNIC PR665 to add more information about Floating NICs to the DASH repo. 
• Vivek at Nvidia clarified that the test plan for ENI-based forwarding PR19098 is merged and reviewed, primarily covering unit testing on a single device and not requiring a full HA setup.
• Discussed recent progress and clarifications on HA reboot management, DPU operational state calculation, and ongoing code updates, with members agreeing to continue discussions offline.
• Mentioned follow up for NAT64 / IPv6 feature planning to be continued; deep‑dives to be moved to February (@Michal Zygmunt) 
• The HA flow state feature in the behavioral model is delayed due to lack of resources.

For Complete Details, please see the “Full DASH Community Notes” near the end of this communication. 

 

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In Summary (full list below), since the last Community call we have:

5 PRs Completed (-27)

12 in To Do (+1 )

8 in Draft (+2)

45 in Progress (+4)

11 Awaiting Review (-2)

 

Just a reminder that we would encourage/invite Community members to present to the Community (test runs or progress, new scenarios, etc…), just ‘r’ to let me know, or generate a PR in the repo.

The DASH channel link is here to subscribe / access WG content (and click the bell to receive notifications). 

 Thank you for your time/contributions – see you on 1/21/2026

 

Meeting Title:  SONiC-DASH-Workgroup Community Meeting #168

Attendees (13):

DASH Group to join: https://groups.google.com/g/sonic-dash

Linux Foundation list: https://lists.sonicfoundation.dev/g/SONiC-Dash

 

Bud Grise - XSightLabs	Kristina Moore - MSFT	Murali Venkateshaiah - Cisco
Deven Jagasia - MSFT	Marian Pritsak - Nvidia	Ramesh Raghupathy - Cisco
Don Ewald - Cisco	Michael Aronovici - Cisco	Veerappan, Senthilnathan - AMD
Gagan Punathil Ellath - Nvidia	Mircea Dan Gheorghe - Keysight	Vivek Reddy Karri - Nvidia
		Yue Gao (Fred) - Cisco

   

 

Full DASH Community Notes 😊

·         Review of Recent PRs and Work Items: led a review of completed and ongoing pull requests, including platform improvements, the unified chassis DB initiative by Vasundhara, and follow-ups on NAT64/IPv6 features with Deven confirming delays.  Marian, Murali Venkateshaiah (Muraliv), and Ramesh Raghupathy (ram) provided input on technical items and review assignments.

·        Completed PRs Overview: Kristina summarized the completion of several pull requests over the last 15 days, highlighting platform-related improvements such as graceful shutdown/startup and test enhancements for HA service conditions, with Vasundhara acknowledged for closing key items.

·        Unified Chassis DB Initiative: The team discussed the ongoing initiative to unify the chassis DB address across platforms, with Vasundhara leading the effort and input from Sasha, Prince, and Gagan; the goal is a vendor-agnostic approach, with technical considerations for configuration and startup order being addressed.

·        NAT64 and IPv6 Feature Follow-Ups: noted that presentations on NAT64 and IPv6 features, initially planned for January, are postponed to February based on discussions with Michal, Deven confirmed the delay from the SDN side.

·        Connection Tracking State Handling: referenced questions from DreamBigSemi regarding connection tracking in the data plane app, with Riff previously responding that resource constraints have delayed progress on this work.

 

·        Queue Review and Status of Draft and Open Items: reviewed the current queue of work items, focusing on items moving from draft to open, including the disable unwanted containers PR and the smart switch DPU temperature test, with Ramesh Raghupathy agreeing to review platform applicability.

·        Disable Unwanted Containers PR: discussed the importance of the PR to disable unwanted containers on smart switch DPUs, with Murali emphasizing the need for further optimization and Kristina noting its movement from Draft state to Open and readiness for review by Sasha.

·        Smart Switch DPU Temperature Test: highlighted a new thermal test contributed by Nvidia for Smart Switch DPUs, with Ramesh questioning its platform specificity and agreeing to review whether the test is generic or platform-specific.

·        Review Assignments and Notifications: noted that Prabhat moved the ‘disable unwanted containers’ PR to Ready for Review state and requested Sasha's review (asking Marian to notify Sasha if possible).

 

·        ENI-Based Forwarding and Floating NIC PRs:.

·        Floating NIC PR Review: Deven raised the topic of adding more information about Floating NICs to the DASH repo, reviewed an old PR by Riff, and volunteered to address outstanding comments and drive the PR to closure.

·        ENI-Based Forwarding Test Plan: Vivek clarified that the test plan for ENI-based forwarding is merged and reviewed, primarily covering unit testing on a single device and not requiring a full HA setup, with Murali  and Senthil confirming the scope and suggesting future additions for HA scenarios.

 

·        HA and DPU State Management Discussions: discussed recent progress and clarifications on HA reboot management, DPU operational state calculation, and ongoing code updates, with members agreeing to continue discussions offline as needed.

·        HA Reboot Management Clarification: Murali reported on a recent call with Deven, Prince, Vasu, Ramesh, and Jing, where they clarified the reboot management capability and signaling for DPU reboot, with plans to continue working with Jing.

·        DPU Operational State Calculation: Fred asked about the DPU operational state in the DPU state table, with Ramesh explaining that the operational state is derived from the mid-plane, control plane, and data plane states, and if any are down, the operational state reflects partial or offline status.

·        HA Code Updates: Vivek confirmed that Jing's team is working on updating the HA code, specifically for the NPU-driven model, and Murali inquired about code usage and progress.

 

·        Meeting Cadence and Closing Remarks: Kristina proposed monitoring the number of PRs to determine if the meeting cadence should shift to every other week, with participants agreeing to revisit the schedule as needed and concluding the meeting with thanks.

 

Follow-up tasks:

• Linux Foundation Mailing List Migration: Everyone please join the Linux Foundation mailing list to facilitate removal from the Google Groups list and reach out to Kristina with any questions. (the team)
• Smart Switch DPU Temperature Test Evaluation: Review the Nvidia-contributed smart switch DPU temperature test to determine if it is platform agnostic and assess its applicability to the team's platform. (Ramesh)
• Floating NIC PR Ownership Transfer: Take over, address the comments, and drive the Floating NIC PR (665) to closure, as Riff is no longer working on it. (Deven)
• ENI-Based Forwarding Test Plan Review: Review the ENI-based forwarding test plan to ensure nothing is missing, particularly in the context of HA and DPU-scoped HA implementations. (Senthil)
• HA Reboot Management Collaboration: Work with Jing to clarify and progress the reboot management capability for HA, following up on the recent call and discussions. (Murali)
• DPU Operational State Table Clarification: Discuss offline with Ramesh to clarify the DPU operational state table and its calculation based on module states. (Fred)

 

 

 

Sticky for Links/Reference:
DASH Groups to join to receive Invites, Meeting Notes, and Comms	DASH: https://groups.google.com/g/sonic-dash     DASH-Test-Workgroup Group: https://groups.google.com/g/sonic-dash-test-workgroup   Linux Foundation list: https://lists.sonicfoundation.dev/g/SONiC-Dash	If anyone knows potentially interested people who would like info re: our community, please have them joins these groups for receive Comms, etc…
Recordings	Teams: Recap: SONiC-DASH Workgroup Community Meeting Wednesday, January 7 | Meeting | Microsoft Teams DASH Community https://youtu.be/sHragjwjAjk	1/7/2026 DASH Community Call; please request access via the link if you are not able to view/listen
Azure DASH GitHub Repo:	https://github.com/sonic-net/DASH
Test/Docs folder:	https://github.com/sonic-net/DASH/blob/main/test/docs/dash-test-workflow-saithrift.md	Ideal test workflow is here, converted to .md
SAI Thrift	SAI Thrift PR	Client server needed for testing
P4	https://opennetworking.org/p4/ and https://p4.org/working-groups/	Open source, domain-specific programming language for network devices, specifying packet processing for data plane devices (switches, routers, NICs, filters, etc.)
PINS	https://opennetworking.org/pins/
PNA consortium spec	https://p4.org/p4-spec/docs/PNA-v0.5.0.html	An architecture describing the structure and common capabilities of network interface controller (NIC) devices which process packets transiting one or more interfaces and a host system. Describes the structure and capabilities of the pipeline, and a user program, which specifies the functionality of the programmable blocks within that pipeline. For more information, see the P4 Language Consortium specifications
IPDK	Infrastructure Programmer Development Kit (ipdk.io) and https://github.com/ipdk-io/ipdk-io.github.io	IPDK is an open source, vendor agnostic framework of drivers and APIs for infrastructure offload and management which runs on a CPU, IPU, DPU or switch. IPDK runs in Linux and uses a set of well-established tools such as DPDK and P4 to enable network virtualization.
bmv2	https://github.com/p4lang/behavioral-model	The second version of the reference P4 software switch, nicknamed bmv2 (for behavioral model version 2). The software switch is written in C++11. It takes as input a JSON file generated from your P4 program by a P4 compiler and interprets it to implement the packet-processing behavior specified by that P4 program
DPDK	https://www.dpdk.org/	DPDK is the Data Plane Development Kit which consists of libraries to accelerate packet processing workloads running on a wide variety of CPU architectures.
Linux Foundation SmartSwitch	https://lists.sonicfoundation.dev/g/sonic-smartswitch/calendar

  

Thank you again for your participation…

Kristina Moore MBA, M.S., CISSP - Azure Core Principal PM / DASH & SmartSwitch
Office: 425-722-7720     Mobile: 425-876-2040     Email: kri...@microsoft.com
DASH Group to join: https://groups.google.com/g/sonic-dash    
Linux Foundation:  https://lists.sonicfoundation.dev/g/SONiC-Dash