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Contents at a Glance
1 - SDN Definition
2 - SDN Benefits
2.1 - Benefits to the IT organization
2.1.1 - Flexibility and Scalability
2.1.2 - Granular Control
2.1.3 - Costs Reduction
2.2 - Benefits to the Networking industry
3 - SDN Criticism
4 - SDN Components
4.1 - SDN Controller
4.2 - SDN Application
4.3 - OpenFlow
4.3.1 - Controller-to-Switch
4.3.2 - Asynchronous
4.3.3 - Symmetric
4.4 - OpenFlow Switches
4.5 - SDN Controller Roles
4.5.1 - Equal Role
4.5.2 - Slave Role
4.5.3 - Master Role
4.5.4 - NoChange Role
5 - SDN Domains
6 - SDN Myths
7 - Conclusion
1 - SDN Defintion
Packets that pass through, or are generated from, that switch will be
treated according to its generated Control Plane. The manner with which
these Packets are treated is called the Data Plane. Therefore, the Data
The Network flows are controlled at the level of the whole Network,
rather than at the level of individual Devices. Therefore, SDN
transforms a distributed Control Plane to a centralized one.
SDN conserves Network resources, like CPU and memory, given that
Protocols need to run only on the SDN Controller and not in every
Device. This is especially helpful in cloud computing in which the
conservation of Network resources is an important objective.
SDN reduces Networking costs[H][H][H] thanks to 2 factors :
1 - Automation of operations.
2 - Cheaper hardware can be interconnected with a powerful SDN
Controller to create a sophisticated infrastructure that would be
3 - SDN Criticism
Compatibility issues : An SDN Controller communicates with SDN
Applications, these applications are written to a set of APIs that are
provided by the SDN controller. Generally, APIs are not standardized,
so an SDN Application that runs on a given SDN controller may have to
be modified to run on another SDN controller[H].
opennetworking.org
necam.com/
nexusis.com
4.2 - SDN Application
bigswitch.com
4.3 - OpenFlow
OpenFlow exploits the fact that most Ethernet switches and routers
possess Flow Tables, such as TCAM[H], that run at line-rate[H]. Although
there are differences between vendorss Flow Tables, there is at the
same time a common set of functions : OpenFlow exploits this common set
of functions.
opennetworking.org
The OpenFlow Protocol was developed at Stanford University [H]. The first
Version 1.0 was published on December 31, 2009 [H]. The current Version
is 1.4[H] (as of June 23, 2014).
In March 2011, the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) was created and the
intellectual property rights of OpenFlow were transitioned to it [H]. The
ONF was tasked at this time with the development and marketing of
OpenFlow. ONF defines itself as "a user-driven organization dedicated
to the promotion and adoption of Software-Defined Networking (SDN)
through the development of Open Standards [H]".
OpenFlow is not the only available SDN Protocol, there are other
alternatives such as : Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol
(XMPP)[H], Network Configuration Protocol (Netcong) [H], and OpenStack[H]
from Rackspace and NASA.
4.3.2 - Asynchronous
4.3.3 - Symmetric
opennetworking.org
VLAN ID.
IP source address.
IP destination address.
IP protocol .
[H]
Figure 11 shows the steps required for routing a traffic flow between 2
hosts across 2 OpenFlow Switches :
1 - A new Packet arrives. The Flow Tables of the 2 OpenFlow Switches
are empty.
2 - The Packet is forwarded to the SDN Controller.
3 - The SDN Controller examines the Packet, then pushes new Flow
Entries into the Flow Tables of the 2 switches. It also sends back the
original Packet to Switch 1.
4 - The original Packet is sent from Switch 1 to Switch 2 based on the
newly-pushed Flow Entry.
5 - The Packet is sent from Switch 2 to the end host.
6, 7, 8 - New Packets belonging to the same flow are routed directly,
at line-rate, since they are matching the newly added Flow Entries.
stanford.edu
When an SDN Controller changes its role to Master, the OpenFlow Switch
must change any other SDN Controller that have the Master role to the
Slave role, but does not change SDN Controllers with the Equal role.
When an OpenFlow Switch changes the role of an SDN Controller from
A Master SDN Controller and all Equal SDN Controllers can fully change
the configuration of an OpenFlow Switch, there is no mechanism to
partition this configuration between those SDN Controllers. If an SDN
Controller in Master role needs to be the exclusive controller able to
bring changes to an OpenFlow Switch, then no controllers should be in
Equal role, and all other controllers should be put in Slave role.
5 - SDN Domains
In large Networks, the use of a single SDN Controller can be
unrealistic, so an appropriate solution would be to divide the original
large Network into smaller manageable portions. Each portion will have
its own SDN implementation and thus, constitute an SDN domain.
cisco.com
The existence of multiple SDN domains creates a need for individual SDN
Controllers to communicate with each other, via a Protocol, to exchange
informations. The IETF is currently working on developing a Protocol,
called SDNi[H]. Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) can also be used to
interconnect SDN Controllers[H].
6 - SDN Myths
Given that SDN is a new topic in the Networking industry, several myths
are surrounding it, some of them are :
In SDN, switches and routers will not run software : Switches and
routers will continue to run software but a less sophisticated one. For
example, the Secure Channel and OpenFlow Protocol require a software to
run.
SDN is Equal to virtualization : Network virtualization is just one
section of SDN.
SDN is a Hardware Killer because it promotes commodity hardware :
Sophisticated hardware will still be needed for heavy and critical
traffic.
SDN and OpenFlow are equivalent : OpenFlow is just an instantiation
of an SDN Protocol, however there are other Protocols as it was
previously mentioned in this document.
cisco.com
7 - Conclusion
SDN technology and the SDN market are still in their early, evolving,
stages. Therefore, any IT organization that intends to implement SDN in
the near future should do it in a limited and incremental manner, such
as implementing SDN for a specific business requirement.
Pica8 : http://www.pica8.com/
RouteFlow : https://sites.google.com/site/routeflow/
Open vSwitch : http://vswitch.org/
FlowScale : http://www.openflowhub.org/display/FlowScale/FlowScale+Home
ProgrammableFlow : http://www.nec.com/en/global/prod/pflow/pf1000.html