Programme & slides 10:00–12:00
| Time | Talk | Speaker | Slides |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10:00–10:05 | Workshop Introduction | Stefano Salsano Univ. of Rome Tor Vergata |
HTML · PDF |
| 10:05–10:15 | SRv6 Introduction | Ahmed Abdelsalam Cisco |
soon |
| 10:15–10:25 | SRv6 for the AI Backend Deterministic path placement, decided at the host and the NIC | Stefano Salsano Univ. of Rome Tor Vergata |
HTML · PDF |
| 10:25–10:40 | SRv6 in SONiC “Enabling AI Backend use-case and many others” | Ahmed Abdelsalam Cisco |
soon |
| 10:40–10:55 | SRv6 in FRR “5 Years of mainline support” | Carmine Scarpitta Cisco |
soon |
| 10:55–11:15 | SRv6 for network providers and service protection Provider-style design on Linux + FRR, observability, redundancy protection | Ferenc Fejes Ericsson |
soon |
| 11:15–11:25 | SRv6 in Linux “9 Years of mainline support” | Andrea Mayer Univ. of Rome Tor Vergata |
soon |
| 11:25–11:45 | SRv6 Layer 2 Services support End.DT2U, the sr6 Ethernet pseudowire device, and the road past VXLAN | Andrea Mayer Univ. of Rome Tor Vergata |
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| 11:45–12:00 | Recap and Discussion | all speakers | — |
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The workshop
Segment Routing over IPv6 (SRv6, RFC 8986) lets an application or operator encode a packet-processing program directly in the IPv6 header. SRv6 has been supported in the Linux kernel since release 4.10, and a rich open-source ecosystem (FRR, SONiC, Cilium, VPP) has grown on top of it.
Following the SRv6 workshops at Netdev 0x16 (Lisbon 2022) and 0x19 (Zagreb 2025), this edition covers three directions that directly impact the kernel datapath — source-routed AI backends, L2 services beyond VXLAN, and provider-grade SRv6 deployment with service protection — plus a short ecosystem update.
Three directions
Source-routed AI backends
ECMP spreading gives little control over how flows map onto a fabric you own completely. SRv6 moves path placement to
the host and the NIC: deterministic, congestion-aware, and reacting to failures without waiting for control-plane
convergence. In Linux: per-packet segment-list selection in seg6/seg6local, eBPF/XDP and NIC
offload at line rate. Underpins the industry MRC protocol (main-track talk).
L2 services beyond VXLAN
RFC 8986 defines the L2 endpoint behaviors (End.DX2, End.DT2U, End.DT2M) and
RFC 9252 the EVPN overlay over SRv6. Kernel L2 support still stops at the End.DX2 cross-connect. A recent
netdev RFC series adds End.DT2U and the sr6 Ethernet pseudowire device — the path to
multipoint services, EVPN-over-SRv6 in FRR, and replacing VXLAN in cloud orchestrators.
Providers & service protection
End-to-end provider-style design on GNU/Linux + FRRouting: addressing, per-service VRF, SID allocation, BGP/IS-IS, TE,
with an SR-MPLS coexistence comparison. Lookup-level observability with tablesnoop, and Redundancy
Protection (R-SID, draft-ietf-spring-sr-redundancy-protection, XDPFRER for SRv6).
References
- RFC 8986 — SRv6 Network Programming. rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8986
- RFC 9252 — BGP Overlay Services Based on Segment Routing over IPv6 (EVPN over SRv6). rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9252
- Internet-Draftongoing draft-ietf-spring-sr-redundancy-protection — SR redundancy protection (R-SID).
- AI backend paper. C. Filsfils, P. Camarillo, A. Abdelsalam, A. Quinci, A. Tulumello, A. Mayer, P. Loreti, L. Bracciale, S. Salsano, “Toward Deterministic Path Placement in AI Backends: A Practical SRv6-Based Architecture”, IEEE CNSM 2025.
- Previous editions. SRv6 workshop at Netdev 0x16 (Lisbon, 2022) and Netdev 0x19 (Zagreb, 2025).
Notes
Workshop chair: Stefano Salsano, University of Rome Tor Vergata / CNIT. Speakers: Ahmed Abdelsalam (Cisco), Carmine Scarpitta (Cisco), Ferenc Fejes (Ericsson), Andrea Mayer (Univ. of Rome Tor Vergata).
Contact: stefano.salsano@uniroma2.it