blog: Outlook for 2022

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+---
+date: 2021-12-26
+title: "A brief look into 2022"
+linkTitle: "Plans for 2022"
+description: "Quo vadis?"
+author: Dimitri Staessens
+---
+
+```
+A discipline doesn’t mean that you make sure that you have breakfast
+at eight o’clock in the morning and you are out of the house by half
+past eight. A discipline is that you… if you conceive some thing, then
+you decide whether or not it’s worth following through, and if it’s
+worth following through then you follow it through to its logical
+conclusion, and do it with the best… to the best of your
+ability. That’s a discipline, yes? -- David Bowie
+```
+
+With the end of the year in sight, it's time for a bit of reflection.
+
+Of course, 2021 was still in the grip of the pandemic. The delta and
+omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 prove to be some of the most contageous
+viruses known to date. Evolution driving emerging coronavirus variants
+that reduce the effectiveness of the vaccines is a big blow for all to
+bear. The fight against this strain can only be won if we all fight
+together, with respect for the health workers that have been standing
+in the front lines for almost two years now. Follow sound medical
+advice, and stay safe.
+
+Of course, I'm here to reflect on the Ouroboros (O7s) project. 2021
+was a bit of a slow year, not in the least because of my own
+motivation -- or lack of it. But some things are worth mentioning.
+
+We rewrote how O7s runs over UDP/IPv4. Instead of using of UDP ports
+to mimic the concepts of port IDs as outlined in RINA, we caved in and
+realigned the O7s ipcpd-udp to work more as a "normal" UDP
+service. The UDP port is not re-used as an Endpoint ID; instead, we
+added a small header to the protocol stack, and use a UDP-UDP tunnel
+to transport O7s traffic. This means that clients connecting to
+an O7s network from behind a NAT firewall will not need to add
+port forwarding rules. This should make things easier for people
+trying Ouroboros over IP.
+
+We removed support for Raptor. Raptor was our NetFPGA demo to run
+Ouroboros point-to-point over Ethernet Layer 1 without the use of
+Ethernet MAC layer and addressing. The plan for Raptor was also to
+include a driver that maps user-space memory (like netmap, but then
+tailored to the O7s shared memory layout) to reduce context switches
+to the kernel when sending high packet rates and thus boost
+performance. However, given the niche hardware requirements and our
+current limited resources, we decided to remove it from the project
+instead of continuing to maintain this.
+
+The most important feature this year is probably the InfluxDB
+exporter, which adds a layer of observability to the project and
+allows us to better monitor the internals for much needed debugging so
+we can stabilize the implementation.
+
+2021 also brought an unexpected surprise, in that we received a review
+from the paper we submitted to the Journal of the ACM. After more than
+2 years, we were not expecting any review anymore. Getting review
+comments on an article always comes with mixed feelings. The paper was
+rejected, and I agree with that outcome. But the quality of the peer
+review was extremely disappointing. For a journal of such standing,
+having only a single reviewer doesn't feel acceptable to me. It's a
+waste of time -- both to me and to the reviewers -- to even try to
+improve and re-submit a paper. Eo Romam iterum crucifigi.
+
+So, what's up for 2022? Right now the focus is on **scalablility of
+the O7s routing system**. To dynamically construct the addressing for
+a network, bottom-up. To build a global-scale network by continuously
+aggregating independent smaller networks, possibly with different
+routing protocols and different naming schemes, without causing
+disruptions to existing services in those networks. This will need
+some changes in the datapath implementation and support in the flow
+management for multiple data transfer components and multiple
+directories. If this sounds interesting, stay tuned.
+
+Finally, I'm infinitely grateful to anyone that took the time to give
+the prototype a go and then reported back on things that didn't go as
+they expected. This is a very small project, I have only so much time
+I can put in, and any bug reports and constructive feedback are really
+appreciated. That's how this can be taken forward. Do keep it coming.
+
+My best wishes for 2022.
+
+Stay healthy, and above all, stay curious.
+
+Dimitri