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l cloud desktop embedded iot governance hardware linux networking open source security system administration audience developers devops enterprise enthusiast resources tutorials training certification events forums q a what is linux about us search sign in welcome log into your account your username your password forgot your password get help password recovery recover your password your email a password will be e mailed to you x linux com topic ai ml cloud desktop embedded iot governance hardware linux networking open source security system administration audience developers devops enterprise enthusiast resources tutorials training certification events forums q a what is linux about us home contributed disaggregated routing with sonic and vpp architecture and integration part one contributed the linux foundation disaggregated routing with sonic and vpp architecture and integration part one by linux com editorial staff october 22 2025 5756 facebook x pinterest whatsapp linkedin reddit email the networking industry is undergoing a fundamental architectural transformation driven by the relentless demands of cloud scale data centers and the rise of software defined infrastructure at the heart of this evolution is the principle of disaggregation the systematic unbundling of components that were once tightly integrated within proprietary monolithic systems this movement began with the separation of network hardware from the network operating system nos a paradigm shift championed by hyperscalers to break free from vendor lock in and accelerate innovation in this blog post we will explore how disaggregated networking takes shape when the sonic control plane meets the vpp data plane you ll see how their integration creates a fully software defined router one that delivers asic class performance on standard x86 hardware while preserving the openness and flexibility of linux based systems disaggregation today extends to the software stack separating the control plane from the data plane this decoupling enables modular design independent component selection and more efficient performance and cost management the integration of software for open networking in the cloud sonic and the vector packet processing vpp framework represents the peak of this disaggregated model sonic originally developed by microsoft and now a thriving open source project under the linux foundation has established itself as the de facto standard for a disaggregated nos offering a rich suite of l3 routing functionalities hardened in the world s largest data centers 1 its core design philosophy is to abstract the underlying switch hardware allowing a single consistent software stack to run on a multitude of asics from different vendors this liberates operators from the constraints of proprietary systems and fosters a competitive innovative hardware ecosystem complementing sonic s control plane prowess is vpp a high performance user space data plane developed by cisco and now part of the linux foundation s fast data project fd io vpp s singular focus is to deliver extraordinary packet processing throughput on commodity commercial off the shelf cots processors by employing techniques like vector processing and bypassing the traditional kernel network stack vpp achieves performance levels previously thought to be the exclusive domain of specialized expensive hardware like asics and fpgas the fusion of these two powerful open source projects creates a new class of network device a fully software defined router that combines the mature feature rich control plane of sonic with the blistering fast forwarding performance of vpp this architecture directly addresses a critical industry need for a network platform that is simultaneously programmable open and capable of line rate performance without relying on specialized hardware the economic implications are profound by replacing vertically integrated vendor locked routers with a software stack running on standard x86 servers organizations can fundamentally alter their procurement and operational models this shift transforms network infrastructure from a capital expenditure heavy capex model characterized by large upfront investments in proprietary hardware to a more agile and scalable operational expenditure opex model the ability to leverage cots hardware drastically reduces total cost of ownership tco and breaks the cycle of vendor lock in democratizing access to high performance networking and enabling a more dynamic cost effective infrastructure strategy deconstructing the components a tale of two titans to fully appreciate the synergy of the sonic vpp integration it is essential to first understand the distinct architectural philosophies and capabilities of each component while they work together to form a cohesive system their internal designs are optimized for entirely different yet complementary purposes sonic is engineered for control abstraction and scalability at the management level while vpp is purpose built for raw unadulterated packet processing speed sonic the cloud scale control plane sonic is a complete open source nos built upon the foundation of debian linux its architecture is a masterclass in modern software design abandoning the monolithic structure of traditional network operating systems in favor of a modular containerized microservices based approach this design provides exceptional development agility and serviceability key networking functions such as border gateway protocol bgp routing stack link layer discovery protocol lldp platform monitoring pmon each run within their own isolated docker container this modularity allows individual components to be updated restarted or replaced without affecting the entire system a critical feature for maintaining high availability in large scale environments the central nervous system of this distributed architecture is an in memory redis database engine which serves as the single source of truth for the switch s state rather than communicating through direct inter process communication ipc or rigid apis sonic s containers interact asynchronously by publishing and subscribing to various tables within the redis database this loosely coupled communication model is fundamental to sonic s flexibility key databases include config_db stores the persistent intended configuration of the switch appl_db a high level application centric representation of the network state such as routes and neighbors state_db holds the operational state of various components asic_db a hardware agnostic representation of the forwarding plane s desired state the cornerstone of sonic s hardware independence and the very feature that makes the vpp integration possible is the switch abstraction interface sai sai is a standardized c api that defines a vendor agnostic way for sonic s software to control the underlying forwarding elements a dedicated container syncd is responsible for monitoring the asic_db upon detecting changes making the corresponding sai api calls to program the hardware each hardware vendor provides a libsai so library that implements this api translating the standardized calls into the specific commands required by their asic s sdk this elegant abstraction allows the entire sonic control plane to remain blissfully unaware of the specific silicon it is running on vpp the user space data plane accelerator while sonic manages the high level state of the network vpp is singularly focused on the task of moving packets as quickly as possible as a core component of the fd io project vpp is an extensible framework that provides the functionality of a router or switch entirely in software its remarkable performance is derived from several key architectural principles vector processing the first and most important is vector processing unlike traditional scalar processing where the cpu processes one packet at a time through the entire forwarding pipeline vpp processes packets in batches or vectors a vector typically contains up to 256 packets the entire vector is processed through the first stage of the pipeline then the second and so on this approach has a profound impact on cpu efficiency the first packet in the vector effectively warms up the cpu s instruction cache i cache loading the necessary instructions for a given task the subsequent packets in the vector can then be processed using these cached instructions dramatically reducing the number of expensive fetches from main memory and maximizing the benefits of modern superscalar cpu architectures user space orientation kernel bypass the second principle is user space operation and kernel bypass the linux kernel network stack while powerful and flexible introduces performance overheads from system calls context switching between kernel and user space and interrupt handling vpp avoids this entirely by running as a user space process it typically leverages the data plane development kit dpdk to gain direct exclusive access to network interface card nic hardware using poll mode drivers pmds vpp continuously polls the nic s receive queues for new packets eliminating the latency and overhead associated with kernel interrupts this direct hardware access is a critical component of its high throughput low latency performance profile packet processing graph finally vpp s functionality is organized as a packet processing graph each feature or operation such as an l2 mac lookup an ip4 route lookup or an access control list acl check is implemented as a node in a directed graph packets flow from node to node as they are processed this modular architecture makes vpp highly extensible new networking features can be added as plugins that introduce new graph nodes or rewire the existing graph without requiring changes to the core vpp engine the design of sai was a stroke of genius originally intended to abstract the differences between various hardware asics however its true power is revealed in its application here the abstraction is so well defined that it can be used to represent not just a physical piece of silicon but a software process the sonic control plane does not know or care whether the entity on the other side of the sai api is a broadcom tomahawk chip or a vpp instance running on an x86 cpu it simply speaks the standardized language of sai this demonstrates that sai successfully abstracted away not just the implementation details of a data plane but the very notion of it being physical allowing a purely software based forwarder to be substituted with remarkable elegance feature sonic vpp primary function control plane management plane data plane architectural model containerized microservices packet processing graph key abstraction switch abstraction interface sai graph nodes plugins operating environment kernel user space hybrid linux based pure user space kernel bypass core performance mechanism distributed state management via redis vector processing cpu cache optimization primary configuration method declarative config_db json redis imperative startup conf binary api creating a high performance software router the integration of sonic and vpp is a sophisticated process that transforms two independent systems into a single cohesive software router the architecture hinges on sonic s decoupled state management and a clever translation layer that bridges the abstract world of the control plane with the concrete forwarding logic of the data plane tracing the lifecycle of a single route update reveals the elegance of this design the end to end control plane flow the process begins when a new route is learned by the control plane in a typical l3 scenario this happens via bgp route reception an ebgp peer sends a route update to the sonic router this update is received by the bgpd process which runs within the bgp container sonic leverages the well established frrouting frr suite for its routing protocols so bgpd is the frr bgp daemon rib update bgpd processes the update and passes the new route information to zebra frr s core component that acts as the routing information base rib manager kernel and fpm handoff zebra performs two critical actions first it injects a route into the host linux kernel s forwarding table via a netlink message second it sends the same route information to the fpmsyncd process using the forwarding plane manager fpm interface a protocol designed for pushing routing updates from a rib manager to a forwarding plane agent publishing to redis the fpmsyncd process acts as the first bridge between the traditional routing world and sonic s database centric architecture it receives the route from zebra and writes it into the appl_db table in the redis database at this point the route has been successfully onboarded into the sonic ecosystem orchestration and translation the orchestration agent orchagent a key process within the switch state service swss container is constantly subscribed to changes in the appl_db when it sees the new route entry it performs a crucial translation it converts the high level application intent route to prefix x via next hop y into a hardware agnostic representation and writes this new state to the asic_db table in redis synchronization to the data plane the final step in the sonic control plane is handled by the syncd container this process subscribes to the asic_db when it detects the new route entry created by orchagent it knows it must program this state into the underlying forwarding plane this entire flow is made possible by the architectural decision to use redis as a central asynchronous message bus in a traditional monolithic nos the bgp daemon might make a direct tightly coupled function call to a forwarding plane driver this creates brittle dependencies sonic s pub sub model by contrast ensures that each component is fully decoupled the bgp container s only responsibility is to publish routes to the appl_db it has no knowledge of who will consume that information this allows the final consumer the data plane to be swapped out with zero changes to any of the upstream control plane components this decoupled architecture is what allows vpp to be substituted for a hardware asic so cleanly and implies that other data planes could be integrated in the future simply by creating a new sai implementation the integration foundation libsaivpp so the handoff from syncd to the data plane is where the specific sonic vpp integration occurs in a standard sonic deployment on a physical switch the syncd container would be loaded with a vendor provided shared library e g libsai_broadcom so when syncd reads from the asic_db it calls the appropriate standardized sai api function e g sai_api_route create_route_entry and the vendor library translates this into proprietary sdk calls to program the physical asic in the sonic vpp architecture this vendor library is replaced by a purpose built shared library libsaivpp so this library is the critical foundationof the entire system it imple...