SLICED PROGRAMMABLE NETWORKSOpenFlow [4] has been demonstrated as a way for researchers to run networking experiments in their production network. Last year, we demonstrated how an OpenFlow controller running on NOX [3] could move VMs seamlessly around an OpenFlow network [1]. While OpenFlow has potential [2] to open control of the network, only one researcher can innovate on the network at a time. What is required is a way to divide, or slice, network resources so that researchers and network administrators can use them in parallel. Network slicing implies that actions in one slice do not negatively affect other slices, even if they share the same underlying physical hardware. A common network slicing technique is VLANs. With VLANs, the administrator partitions the network by switch port and all traffic is mapped to a VLAN by input port or explicit tag. This coarse-grained type of network slicing complicates more interesting experiments such as IP mobility or wireless handover.Here, we demonstrate FlowVisor, a special purpose OpenFlow controller that allows multiple researchers to run experiments safely and independently on the same production OpenFlow network. To motivate FlowVisor's flexibility, we demonstrate four network slices running in parallel: one slice for the production network and three slices running experimental code (Figure 1). Our demonstration runs on real network hardware deployed on our production network 1 at Stanford and a wide-area test-bed with a mix of wired and wireless technologies.

In the past couple of years we've seen quite a change in the wireless industry: Handsets have become mobile computers running user-contributed applications on (potentially) open operating systems. It seems we are on a path towards a more open ecosystem; one that has been previously closed and proprietary. The biggest winners are the users, who will have more choice among competing, innovative ideas.The same cannot be said for the wireless network infrastructure, which remains closed and (mostly) proprietary, and where innovation is bogged down by a glacial standards process. Yet as users, we are surrounded by abundant wireless capacity and multiple wireless networks (WiFi and cellular), with most of the capacity off-limits to us. It seems industry has little incentive to change, preferring to hold onto control as long as possible, keeping an inefficient and closed system in place.This paper is a "call to arms" to the research community to help move the network forward on a path to greater openness. We envision a world in which users can move freely between any wireless infrastructure, while providing payment to infrastructure owners, encouraging continued investment. We think the best path to get there is to separate the network service from the underlying physical infrastructure, and allow rapid innovation of network services, contributed by researchers, network operators, equipment vendors and third party developers.We propose to build and deploy an open-but backward compatible-wireless network infrastructure that can be easily deployed on college campuses worldwide. Through virtualization, we allow researchers to experiment with new network services directly in their production network.

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