Carving research slices out of your production networks with OpenFlow

Abstract

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.

The influence of datacenter usage on symmetry in datacenter network design

“…They are primarily geared towards switch-centric DCNs, but the basic methodologies can be applied within server-centric DCNs too. Both SecondNet and Oktopus are more relevant to server-centric DCNs than methodologies such as FlowVisor [54] and FlowN [18]: SecondNet and Oktopus enforce virtual datacenter isolation through hypervisors installed at servers, whereas FloVisor and FlowN enforce isolation through configured rules at switches (however, we have more to say about the applicability of SecondNet and Oktopus to server-centric DCNs presently). We emphasize that we are only interested in the embedding algorithms underlying SecondNet and Oktopus, and that there are many other more practical aspects to both.…”

Network Virtualization for QoS-Aware Resource Management in Cloud Data Centers: A Survey

“…FlowVisor [44] is a special purpose OpenFlow controller that acts as a transparent proxy between OpenFlow switches and multiple OpenFlow controllers. It allows to slice a network into parts that are managed by separate OpenFlow controllers while enforcing performance isolation between slices.…”

Xperience of Programmable Network with OpenFlow

“…To run researcher's networking experiment parallel with production traffic safely, there is a need of network slicing. So in OpenFlow [5] is introduced.…”