SDN

Software Defined
Networking
What is it, how does it work,

and what is it good for?
Many slides stolen from Jennifer Rexford, Nick
McKeown, Scott Shenker, Teemu Koponen, Yotam
Harchol and David Hay
Agenda
• What is Software Defined

Networking (SDN)?
• What is OpenFlow? How does it

work?
• Challenges en route to SDN
• Research directions
What is SDN?
The Internet: A Remarkable Story
• Tremendous success
– from research experiment
to global infrastructure
• Enables innovation in applications

– Web, P2P, VoIP, social networks, virtual
worlds
• But, the Internet’s infrastructure

remained fairly stagnant for decades
The Internet’s Landscape
constant innovation
Applications:
Internet Protocols:
routing, congestion
stagnant! control, naming, …
(TCP/IP, BGP, DNS, OSPF, ECMP,…)
Technologies:
constant innovation
Why Can’t We Innovate?
• Closed equipment
– software bundled with hardware
– vendor-specific interfaces
• Over specified
– slow protocol standardization
• Few people can innovate

– equipment vendors write the code
– long delays to introduce new features
Impacts performance, security, reliability, cost…

Networks are Hard to Manage
• Operating a network is expensive

– more than half the cost of a network
– yet, operator error causes most outages
• Buggy software in the equipment

– routers with 20+ million lines of code
– cascading failures, vulnerabilities, etc.
• The network is “in the way”

– especially a problem in data centers
– … and home networks
Traditional Computer Networks
Data plane:
packet
streaming
forward, filter, buffer, mark,

rate-limit, and measure packets
Control plane:
distributed algorithms
track topology changes, compute

routes, install forwarding rules
Management plane:
human time scale
collect measurements and configure

the equipment
New Paradigm:
Software Defined Networking (SDN)
logically-centralized control
smart,
slow
API to the data plane
(e.g., OpenFlow)
dumb,
fast
switches
12
A Helpful Analogy
Mainframes
AppAppAppAppAppAppAppAppAppAppApp
Specialized
Open Interface
Applications
Windows Mac
Specialized or Linux or OS
(OS)
Operating
System Open Interface
Specialized
Hardware Microprocessor
vertically integrated horizontal

closed, proprietary open interfaces
slow innovation rapid innovation
small industry huge industry
Routers/Switches
AppAppAppAppAppAppAppAppAppAppApp
Specialized Open Interface

Features
Control Control Control
or or
Specialized Plane Plane Plane
Control
Plane Open Interface
Specialized Merchant
Hardware Switching Chips
horizontal
vertically integrated
open interfaces
closed, proprietary
rapid innovation
slow innovation
15
How SDN works
The OpenFlow protocol

OpenFlow Switching
OpenFlow Switch specification
OpenFlow Switch PC
Secure Controller
sw Channel
Flow
hw Table
Controller: Programmability
Controller Application
Network OS
events from switches commands to switches

topology changes, (un)install rules,
traffic statistics, query statistics,
arriving packets send packets
17
Reactive vs. Proactive
• Reactive SDN:
switches send (first) packets to controller, then
controller programs switch's flow table to handle
rest of the flow
– Problem: source of DoS on controller (packet-in
event)
• Proactive SDN:
Controller programs the switches proactively,
according to its own knowledge of the network
– Requires smarter approaches than just reacting to
network events (global knowledge, discovery,
updates…)
Flow Table Entry at Switch
“Type 0” OpenFlow Switch
Rule Action Stats
Packet + byte counters
1. Forward packet to port(s)

2. Encapsulate and forward to controller
3. Drop packet
4. Send to normal processing pipeline
Switch MAC MAC Eth VLAN IP IP IP TCP TCP

Port src dst type ID Src Dst Prot sport dport
+ mask
Data-Plane: Simple Packet Handling
• Simple packet-handling rules

– Pattern: match packet header bits
– Actions: drop, forward, modify, send to controller
– Priority: disambiguate overlapping patterns
– Counters: #bytes and #packets
1. src=1.2.*.*, dest=3.4.5.*  drop

2. src = *.*.*.*, dest=3.4.*.*  forward(2)
3. src=10.1.2.3, dest=*.*.*.*  send to
controller
OpenFlow
• Definition in progress
• Additional actions
 rewrite headers
 map to queue/class
 encrypt
• More flexible header
 allow arbitrary matching of first few bytes
• Support multiple controllers
 load-balancing and reliability
Example OpenFlow Applications
• Dynamic access control

• Seamless mobility/migration
• Server load balancing
• Network virtualization
• Using multiple wireless access points
• Energy-efficient networking
• Adaptive traffic monitoring
• Denial-of-Service attack detection
See http://www.openflow.org/videos/
E.g.: Dynamic Access Control
• Inspect first packet of a connection

• Consult the access control policy
• Install rules to block or route traffic
E.g.: Seamless Mobility/Migration
• See host send traffic at new location

• Modify rules to reroute the traffic
E.g.: Server Load Balancing
• Pre-install load-balancing policy
• Split traffic based on source IP
src=0*
src=1*
25
In-depth Example: Simple Repeater
Controller
1 2
Switch
• Simple Network Repeater

– forward packets received on port 1 out 2 and vice versa
26
Simple Repeater
Controller (POX) (Pseudo)-Program
def handle_packetIn(packet):
out_port = 2 Controller
if packet.in_port == 2:
out_port = 1
flow_mod = ofp_flow_mod()
flow_mod.match = ofp_match()
flow_mod.match.in_port = \
packet.in_port
1 2
action = ofp_action_output()
action.out_port = out_port
flow_mod.action = [ action ] Switch
flow_mod.buffer_id = \
packet.buffer_id
send(flow_mod)
Flow Table
Priority Pattern Action Counters
DEFAULT IN_PORT:1 OUTPUT:2 (0,0)
DEFAULT IN_PORT:2 OUTPUT:1 (0,0)

27
OpenFlow in the Wild
• Open Networking Foundation
– Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Verizon,
Deutsche Telekom, and many other companies
• Commercial OpenFlow switches
– HP, NEC, Quanta, Dell, IBM, Juniper, …
• Network operating systems
– NOX, Beacon, Floodlight, POX, …
• Network deployments
– Campuses, research backbone networks
– Commercial deployments (e.g., Google backbone)
But… Heterogeneous Switches
• Number of packet-handling rules (TCAM/memory limits)
• Different OpenFlow version support
• Range of matches and actions (not all matches and actions are
mandatory in the protocol)
• Multi-stage pipeline of packet processing (allowed but not
defined in the standard)
• Vendor-specific features
• Offload some control-plane functionality (?)
access MAC IP
control look-up look-up
29
SDN or OpenFlow?
• OpenFlow is not being adapted as-is

• Major vendors either completely discard
OpenFlow or use a massively changed variant
• Doing that requires having the ability to change
the protocol on both sides (controller + switch)
• Is OpenFlow dead?
30
31
Challenges
Controller Delay and Overhead
• Controller is much slower the the switch
• Processing packets leads to delay and
overhead
• Need to keep most packets in the “fast path”
packets
32
Distributed Controller
For scalability and

reliability
Controller Controller
Application Application
Partition and replicate state

Network OS Network OS
… and: where to put the

controller(s)?
Taking into account latency,

resiliency, load balancing...
33
Testing and Debugging
• OpenFlow makes programming possible

– Network-wide view at controller
– Direct control over data plane
• Plenty of room for bugs

– Still a complex, distributed system
• Need for testing techniques

– Controller applications
– Controller and switches
– Rules installed in the switches
34
Programming Abstractions
• Controller APIs are low-level
– Thin veneer on the underlying hardware
• Need better languages Controller

– Composition of modules
– Managing concurrency
– Querying network state
– Network-wide abstractions
• Example: Switches
– http://www.frenetic-lang.org/
35
MiniNet
36
MiniNet
• Creates scalable SDN (up to hundreds of nodes) using
OpenFlow, on a single PC
• Allows to quickly create, interact with and customize
a SDN prototype with complex topologies, and can be
used to emulate real networks – all on your PC
• Can work with any kind of OpenFlow controller
• Takes seconds to install
• Easy to program
• Of course, is an
open source project
37
MiniNet
• Not only for teaching purposes!
• Used for the development and testing

of networks
38
Innovating with SDN
Dealing with Large Tables
Palette: Distributing Tables in Software

Defined Networks
Y. Kanizo, D. Hay and I. Keslassy

Access Control in SDN
• Consider the following network.
– Table at each ingress point
Ingress points hold

(too) large tables
41
How to Solve this Problem?
Idea: Distribute the rules among all

switches such that each packet goes
through all rules along its path.
42
Palette: Step I
Split the large (TCAM) table into smaller tables

– identify each smaller table with a unique colour
43
Palette: Step II
Assign at most a single colour to each switch s.t.
every packet-forwarding path is a “rainbow path”
Algorithmic Challenges
• Maximizing the number of colours (smaller

tables), k
• Splitting the large (TCAM) table into k

smaller tables
– so as to minimize the size of the largest table
• http://webee.technion.ac.il/~isaac/p/tr12-
05_palette.pdf
Rethinking (Routing)
Protocols
On the Resilience of Routing Tables:
J. Feigenbaum, P. B. Godfrey, A. Panda,

M. Schapira, S. Shenker, and A. Singla
Motivation
d
Motivation
Routes computed by, say, shortest paths

routing alg
Motivation
Packet
i X d
forwarding path? No!

Routing: Data vs. Control Plane
• Routing is a control plane operation
– slow (ms – s)
• Packet forwarding is a data plane operation

– fast (μs)
• Today’s routing protocols

1. establish connectivity
2. optimize routes (= shortest paths)
• failure ⇒ re-convergence ⇒ dropped packets!

How to Solve this Problem?
Idea: Push (only!) connectivity to

the data plane
– immediately react to failures
– optimize routes on a longer time scale
51
Forwarding Model
• Packet for node d arrives at node i
• Outgoing edge is a function of

- incoming edge
- set of live edges
d i
fid: Ei x P(Ei) -> Ei

Resilient Forwarding
• Forwarding is t-resilient iff for any

(at most) t edge failures:
– existence of path from i to d ⇒ loop-
free forwarding from to d
• Perfect resilience ≣ t →∞
Thm: Can always protect against
one failure
Big Gap!
Thm: Cannot always provide perfect

resilience
What Next?
• Conditions for k-resilience?

– restricted failure models?
• Resilience for specific families of
graphs?
• Randomized forwarding rules?
• ... ?
Full paper available online as YALE/DCS/TR1454

See also [Liu-Panda-Singla-Godfrey-S-Shenker, NSDI 2013]
Conclusion
• SDN is revolutionizing networking
• Rethinking networking
– open interfaces to the data plane
– separation of control and data
– leveraging techniques from distributed
systems
• Significant momentum, many challenges

56
– in both research and industry
Thank You

SDN

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Software Defined

What is it, how does it work,

• What is Software Defined

• What is OpenFlow? How does it

• Challenges en route to SDN

• Enables innovation in applications

• But, the Internet’s infrastructure

• Few people can innovate

Impacts performance, security, reliability, cost…

• Operating a network is expensive

• Buggy software in the equipment

• The network is “in the way”

forward, filter, buffer, mark,

track topology changes, compute

collect measurements and configure

vertically integrated horizontal

Specialized Open Interface

How SDN works

The OpenFlow protocol

events from switches commands to switches

Rule Action Stats

Packet + byte counters

1. Forward packet to port(s)

Switch MAC MAC Eth VLAN IP IP IP TCP TCP

• Simple packet-handling rules

1. src=1.2.*.*, dest=3.4.5.*  drop

• Dynamic access control

• Inspect first packet of a connection

• See host send traffic at new location

• Simple Network Repeater

DEFAULT IN_PORT:2 OUTPUT:1 (0,0)

• OpenFlow is not being adapted as-is

For scalability and

Partition and replicate state

… and: where to put the

Taking into account latency,

• OpenFlow makes programming possible

• Plenty of room for bugs

• Need for testing techniques

• Need better languages Controller

• Not only for teaching purposes!

• Used for the development and testing

Palette: Distributing Tables in Software

Y. Kanizo, D. Hay and I. Keslassy

Ingress points hold

Idea: Distribute the rules among all

Split the large (TCAM) table into smaller tables

• Maximizing the number of colours (smaller

• Splitting the large (TCAM) table into k

On the Resilience of Routing Tables:

J. Feigenbaum, P. B. Godfrey, A. Panda,

Routes computed by, say, shortest paths

forwarding path? No!

• Packet forwarding is a data plane operation

• Today’s routing protocols

• failure ⇒ re-convergence ⇒ dropped packets!

Idea: Push (only!) connectivity to

• Packet for node d arrives at node i

1. src=1.2.., dest=3.4.5.*  drop