DASH Workgroup Community Update 11/19/2025

[Kristina Moore]

Hello DASH Open Source Community –thank you for your time last Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving Week. 

We had Michal from the Azure SDN team and Prince from the SONiC team join to discuss the need to standardize and enhance telemetry counters, requesting that all participating members contribute their internal counters, clarify counter definitions, and ensure comprehensive coverage across vendors for improved diagnostics and monitoring; Kristina created Issue 689 https://github.com/sonic-net/DASH/issues/689 for the work, and pre-populated from Michal’s document.  Please begin contributing there 😊

Michal also introduced producing a NAT64 action type in the Smart Switch pipeline (and full IPv6 support), allowing for translation between IPv6 and IPv4 using configurable prefix-based routing and NAT pools, with the implementation details left to vendors.

Lastly for VXLan Port Range Validation, we had ensured that the regression test for VXLAN decapsulation includes validation that only packets arriving on the specified source port range are accepted and others are dropped, confirming this is covered in the relevant PR2195. (thanks Marian!).

For brevity’s sake this week, I’ll only list the Completed items in our table further below (as our work items list is quite large).

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 initiate deletion of the sonic-dash@googlegroups list we used when we began the project. 

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

Follow-ups: 

• Telemetry Counter Standardization, Documentation, Tracking: Contribute lists of supported telemetry counters from each vendor, including detailed descriptions of what each counter measures, and participate in standardizing and documenting these counters in a shared repository (e.g., GitHub issue or PR). (All vendors (e.g., AMD, NVIDIA, XSightLabs, others), coordinated via GitHub Issue 689: https://github.com/sonic-net/DASH/issues/689
• Telemetry Counter Implementation Tracking: Michal to provide the shared document for upload to the GitHub repo - done - Kristina has pre-populated much of the content
• NAT64 Support for Smart Switches: Draft and share a document outlining the use case and requirements for NAT64 action type and full IPv6 support in the Smart Switch pipeline, and initiate community discussion and planning for implementation. (Michal, Prince) GitHub Issue 691: https://github.com/sonic-net/DASH/issues/691
• Workstream Issue Creation: Create GitHub issues to track the three major workstreams: (1) telemetry counters, (2) IPv6 support for current models, and (3) NAT64 routing and pipeline updates, and assign owners for each. (Kristina) – done Issue 689, 690, 691
• VXLAN Port Range Validation: Ensure that the regression test for VXLAN decapsulation includes validation that only packets arriving on the specified source port range are accepted and others are dropped, confirming this is covered in the relevant PR2195. (Marian)

 

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

12 PRs Completed (-23)

1 in To Do (- )

9 in Draft (+/- 0)

43 in Progress (+3)

15 Awaiting Review (+6)

 

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 12/10/2025

 

Meeting Title:  SONiC-DASH-Workgroup Community Meeting #165

Attendees (19):

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

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

 

Abdul Rouff - Nvidia	Gagan Punathil Ellath - Nvidia	Mircea Dan Gheorghe - Keysight	Sasha Ivantsiv - Nvidia
Bud Grise - XSightLabs	Kristina Moore - MSFT	Mukesh MV - AMD	Ted Weatherford - XSightLabs
Deven Jagasia - MSFT	Marian Pritsak - Nvidia	murali Venkateshaiah - Cisco	Veerappan, Senthil - AMD
Don Ewald - Cisco	Michael Aronovici - Cisco	Prince Sunny - MSFT	Vivek Reddy Karri - Nvidia
Farhan Tariq - DreamBig Semi	Michal Zygmunt - MSFT	Ramesh Raghupathy - Cisco

   

 

 

Full DASH Community Notes 😊

•  Telemetry Counters Standardization and Enhancement: Michal from the Azure SDN team led a discussion on the need to standardize and enhance telemetry counters, urging all participating companies to contribute their internal counters, clarify counter definitions, and ensure comprehensive coverage across vendors for improved diagnostics and monitoring.

• Current Counter Limitations: Michal highlighted that existing telemetry counters are basic and lack sufficient visibility for packet analysis, with many valuable internal counters not exposed or standardized across vendors, making diagnostics and monitoring challenging.
• Call for Community Contributions: Michal requested that companies in the community contribute their own counters, especially those related to DPU and ENI, to a shared list, and participate in standardizing which counters should be exposed for unified analysis.
• Counter Definition and Documentation: Participants agreed on the importance of clarifying counter definitions and descriptions, as current comments are often unclear or simply repeat enum names, making it difficult to interpret counter meanings and usage.
• Vendor-Specific Implementation Tracking: Murali and Michal discussed creating a comprehensive table listing all required counters, with columns for each vendor to indicate support, and color-coding must-have counters, enabling tracking of implementation status and identifying gaps.
• Action Plan for Counter Management: Kristina proposed managing the counter list via a GitHub Issue or PR, allowing all vendors to update their supported counters and definitions collaboratively, with Senthil and Marian confirming their willingness to contribute and update their respective lists.

• Telemetry Counter Update Frequency and Data Flow: Discussed the update intervals for telemetry counters, clarifying that the polling frequency is configurable per counter type and typically ranges from one to five seconds, with a script handling data retrieval from hardware SDKs.

• Configurable Polling Intervals: Prince explained that the polling interval for counters such as port stats and ENI stats is configurable, with common settings being 1 second for port stats and 5 seconds for queue stats, and that this interval can be adjusted as needed.
• Data Collection Mechanism: Prince described the use of a script that runs at the configured polling interval to fetch counter data from the hardware SDK and update the counter database, ensuring timely and consistent telemetry data collection.
• Performance Considerations: Ramesh noted that the frequency of counter updates could impact performance, and Michal confirmed that an interval of 1 to 5 seconds is sufficient for their needs, as backend systems aggregate the data.

 

• NAT64 and IPv6 Support in Smart Switches: Discussed the need to enhance Smart Switch support for IPv6-only AI workloads, including the introduction of a NAT64 action type, flexible prefix routing, and alignment with (but not strict compliance to) RFC 6146, with plans to document use cases and coordinate community development.

• AI Workload IPv6 Requirements: Michal explained that new AI data centers operate natively on IPv6, requiring Smart Switches to fully support IPv6 traffic, including overlay routing and bridging to Azure services, which may still use IPv4.
• NAT64 Action Type Proposal: Michal proposed introducing a NAT64 action type in the Smart Switch pipeline, allowing for translation between IPv6 and IPv4 using configurable prefix-based routing and NAT pools, with the implementation details left to vendors.
• RFC Compliance and Flexibility: Marian asked about RFC 6146 compliance, and Michal clarified that while the NAT64 prefix from the RFC would be supported, the implementation would allow for arbitrary prefixes to accommodate customer requirements, thus not being strictly RFC-compliant.
• Development Coordination and Timeline: Prince and Michal agreed to document the use cases and coordinate with the community to update pipeline models and SAI headers, noting that the work is a few months out but should begin soon to meet deployment timelines.

• Security Validation for VXLAN Port Ranges PR2195: Michal, Kristina, and Marian confirmed that security validation for VXLAN encapsulation and decapsulation port ranges in the OpenComputeProject/SAI  is underway, ensuring that only packets from allowed port ranges are accepted, with Marian noting that regression tests are in place.

• Port Range Enforcement: Michal emphasized the need for strict validation of source and destination port ranges during VXLAN decapsulation to prevent unauthorized traffic, and Marian confirmed that packets from outside the allowed range are dropped.
• Testing and Implementation: Kristina referenced PR2195 and Marian stated that regression tests have been run to ensure the validation logic is functioning as intended.

• Action Items and Workstream Coordination: Prince, Kristina, and Michal outlined three main workstreams for the community: Telemetry Counter standardization, IPv6 support for current models, and NAT64 routing, with plans to track progress via GitHub issues and assign owners for each stream.

 

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: SONiC-DASH Workgroup Community Meeting-20251119_090831-Meeting Recording.mp4 DASH Community https://youtu.be/LRsutlJ63K0	11/19/2025 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