Rebuilding an OpenFlow Controller in Rust#
Open vSwitch and OVN 2026 Fall Conference digest Program Wildcard pick 2–4 November 2026
Or Mazza, NVIDIA; Quentin Barrand, NVIDIA; Alin Serdean, NVIDIA
- Why: Not a networking-technique talk but a direction signal: a C→Rust rewrite of a production OpenFlow controller (HBN on BlueField) with binary compatibility preserved and measured gains — 8% faster insertion, 14% faster deletion, 57% faster flow-statistics collection — plus an explicit debate about rewriting parts of OVS itself in Rust.
- What: The HBN controller rewrite from C to Rust for memory safety, concurrency, and testability, delivered without disrupting users, with the above performance numbers and practical lessons from running it in a real DPU platform. The speakers open the question of where Rust fits in OVS proper and what C bindings would be required. (from abstract only)
- How: Incremental Rust introduction behind a binary-compatible interface; measurable before/after flow-operation benchmarks.
- Where applicable: The results are HBN/BlueField-specific; the rewrite pattern and the OVS-in-Rust debate generalize to the whole project — which is why it's worth a PM's attention even beyond the immediate platform.