SDN Research

Roy Hockett - Network ArchitectJanuary 14, 2014

Common Solutions Group workshop

Software Defined Networking (SDN)

• Not a new in idea, but new research area• Management of networks has used flavors of

SDN for years, Perl, SNMP, NetCONF, etc.• R&E – Dragon, OSCARS, HOPI, DCN, etc.• But as research area it is recent.– Clean Slate Project – 2007

SDN & Research

• Research on Networking and abstractions.– Genesis for SDN, etc.

• Research on SDN Implementations– Inter-Plane communication, Security, etc.

• Research that uses SDN as tool or component.– MobiLab, AGLT2

UM SDN Research

• UM Research that uses SDN as a tools– MobiLab– Atlas Great Lakes Tier 2 (AGLT2)

• A global-scale live laboratory for supporting mobile computing science– Mobiperf – Mobile phone performance tool– PowerTutor – Power Display of Android phone– Transparent Off Engine (TOE)– Hi-Jack – Sensor peripherals for mobile phone.

• Directed by Dr. Morley Mao• http://mobilab.eecs.umich.edu/index.html

• Dr. Morley Mao• Research: – Mobile Computing, networks issues– Mobile Cloud Computing– Routing Plane: Happy Packets– Routing protocol models– Others

• LHC Computing and Muon Collaboration• SDN Projects– DYNES– ANSE– Terapaths

• http://www.aglt2.org

UM SDN Strategy

• Environment for researchers and students to try new things.

• Ways to grow the scaling of the research.• Ready for use of SDN on campus production

network.• Relationships with researchers and R&E

Community.

UM SDN Strategy (details)

• Provide Sandbox for SDN research– GENI WiMax station and GENI racks on campus

• Interconnect SDN islands.– MPLS tunnels, vLANs, GRE tunnels

• Interconnect Sandbox and campus with Real SDN Networks at the Science DMZ.– GENI Mesoscale & Internet2 AL2S

UM SDN Strategy (Cont)

• Network Lab with multiple vendor switches for testing.

• Install an SDN capable infrastructure.– Border, Core, DataCenter, Building routers

• Participate in the R&E SDN Efforts– Intenet2 SDN Working Group– GENI Conferences

Testing scale of SDN research• Control Plane– One Switch. (Vswitch)– Multiple Switches (Network lab)– Multiple Vendor’s Switches (Network Lab, GENI,

Internet2)

• Data plane with traffic– Mininet (Virual Network)– Sandbox (GENI Mesoscale)– Real network (Internet2 AL2S)

Keys for SDN solution deployments

• Bright People with ideas.• Developers to build the solution (Proof of

Concept)• Staff developers to make the solution

production quality.• Culture where maintaining code/solutions is

welcomed.• Relationship between Academics and IT staff.

Relationships

• Collaboration between Researchers and IT– Jointly written proposals• CC-NIE for Univ. of Michigan

– Sharing of ideas• SDN Trace

– SDN Working Group and Univ. of Houston researcher

Reference

• Software-Defined Networking: A Comprehensive Surveyhttp://arxiv.org/abs/1406.0440