CHAPTER ONE

1.1

Background of Study

Nowadays rapid grow of wireless devices that require of wireless network infrastructure
to support the wireless devices to get connection. Wireless network is the network that
allows the computer or wireless devices to connect to the network without using any
cable. Besides that, the technique that use by wireless network to communicate with
wireless devices is by using radio wave technique. One of the famous types of the
wireless network infrastructure is Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) (Zhang, Kai,
& Song, 2014).

Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) is using wireless distribution technique that
links two or more devices in wireless network and connect to the wider internet through
access points (Shourbaji, 2013). Moreover, if users want to move from one place to
another place around the network coverage area, it can move freely without additional
cables. The current approach to manage the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) is
by using Software Define Network (SDN).

Software Define Network (SDN) is the one offering for the imminent internet
technology. Network administrators can handle network services through abstraction of
lower level functionality by using SDN. However, the traditional technique of the
internet are bound together the data plane and control plane in the internet equipment
(Huang, Chou, Hu, & Liu, 2014). SDN technique is a separation of the relationship
between data plane and control plane from the internet equipment (Khondoker, Zaalouk,
Marx, & Bayarou, 2014). However, data plane is staying in the internet equipment.

Data plane is the one important part in the WLAN network. Data plane is responsible for
carries user traffic and enables data transfer to and from clients in the WLAN network
(Huang et al., 2014). Besides that, data plane is concerned with forwarding packets
through the switches or routers and it also known as forwarding plane (Puthalath, 2012).
SDN requires some way for control plane to communicate with the data plane. The one
protocol that can use to communicate between control plane and data plane is
OpenFlow.

OpenFlow is the one of the SDN standards protocol. Furthermore, it is the protocol that
enables control plane and data plane communicate with each other in SDN network.
OpenFlow possess flow table that perform packets lookup and packets forwarding
(Heller, 2009). Besides that, the forwarding table in the internet equipment can be
controlled remotely by control plane (Puthalath, 2012).

Control plane that has decoupled from the internet equipment and placed in the
controller. Besides that, control plane will decide all decision and it is standalone
(Huang et al., 2014). All rules will be configured in the controller and the packet will
controlled by control plane. Furthermore, users free to implement desired application in
the SDN network. Nonetheless, controller needs other application to manage control
plane. So that, FloodLight controller will be used to manage control plane in the
controller.

FloodLight controller is the controller application in SDN network. It provides interface

for the controller to determine network rule that guide the packet flow in the network.
Besides that, FloodLight controller cooperates with OpenFlow protocol to provide the
communication between data plane and control plane (Huang et al., 2014).

1.2

Problem Statement

Ideally, SDN help the users for easily manage their network and easily to configure the
network protocol for their WLAN network. The technology of SDN is decoupling the
control plane and data plane and placed the control plane in the controller. Thus, users
can focus for configuration the rule of their WLAN network on the SDN controller.
Besides that, at the data plane it just focus on the passing of the packet to the
destination. So this situation will help internet equipment to reduce their work and it will
make users easier to manage their network.

However, the current situation in the Internet scale is large and many protocols are
applied, so Internet equipment gets will become overheats for packing and unpacking
different protocol package. On the other hand, users cannot to implement or develop
desired

applications

on

the

traditional

internet

equipment

(Huang

et

al.,

2014).Traditional internet equipment also has the firmware that which is controlled by
vender (Puthalath, 2012). Furthermore, they also need to configure these rules in the
Command Line Interface (CLI) that hard to operated and not interactive. Thus, the
configuration from the high level policies for distributed to the low level configuration
will become more difficult to configured by network operators.

Therefore, this project proposed the implementation of SDN in WLAN to reduce the
complexity of network configuration and management of the WLAN network.
Furthermore, these projects also try to reduce the task of the internet equipment. This
project focuses on the implementation FloodLight controller in the SDN network.

1.3

Research Objective

The aim of this objective is to implement Software Define Network into Wireless Local
Area Network infrastructure. The objectives of this project are:
1. To implement Software Define Network by using FloodLight controller.
2. To investigate and analyze the network performance base on throughput
and latency.

1.4

Scope and Limitation of research

This project is to implementing the Software Define Network (SDN). It is because the
traditional internet equipment claims that there is too much different protocol to be
controlled in the packet that can cause overhead. On the other hand, this project also to
investigate on how Software Define Network (SDN) it operate and how the Software
Define Network (SDN) architecture.

Besides that, the proposed of this project is to implemented in the limited Wireless Local
Area Network (WLAN) only. This project will involve one CPU as a controller that the
operating system will use Linux Operating System. Furthermore, the software that will
be running in the controller is the FloodLight controller. It also will use one Access
Point (AP) switch that can provide wireless connection to the wireless devices. The old
firmware of the Access Point (AP) will be replaced with OpenFlow protocols that
provide the communication between controller and the Access Point (AP).

This project will not compare the performance between traditional network and
Software Define Network (SDN) network. It is because of the limitation of the time to
set up both of the network which is SDN network and traditional network.

1.5

Significance of Research

The project significance is to separate the control plane and data plane in the traditional
network by using SDN network. Besides that, to reduce the work of the internet
equipment in the traditional network architecture. in the traditional network the internet
equipment will do two job which is send the packet and control the packet by using
certain rule that has been set. After this project has been implemented it will divide the
job of hardware. The Access Point (AP) will send the packet and all rule will be set in
the controller that will control the packet. So it will reduce the overhead of the internet
equipment. On the other hand, the significance of this project is to replace Command
Line Interface (CLI) with interface provided by FloodLight controller.

1.6

Chapters Outline

Chapter one gives the overview about research of Implementation SDN in the WLAN
by using FloodLight controller. This chapter also discussed about project background,
problem statement, project objective, scope and limitation of this project, and
significance of the project. Chapter two provides literature review of the project that
with related work from the previous researchers. Besides that, chapter three will explain
and focus about project methodology that will used to implement in this project.