Reclaiming the brain: Useful OpenFlow functions in the data plane

Liron Schiff, Michael Borokhovich, Stefan Schmid

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

21 Scopus citations

Abstract

Software-defined networks (SDNs) have the potential to radically simplify the network management by providing a programmatic interface to a logically centralized controller. However, outsourcing the management to the software controller comes at a price, and good tradeoffs have to be found between the benefits of a fine-grained control and its costs. In this paper, we show that OpenFlow, the predominant SDN protocol, allows to implement powerful functions "in the south", i.e., in the data plane. Our approach, called SmartSouth, can be used to reduce interactions with the control plane as well as to make the network more robust. Moreover, while rendering the data plane "smarter", SmartSouth only relies on the standard OpenFlow matchaction paradigm; thus, the data plane functions remain formally verifiable-a key benefit of SDN. To demonstrate the potential of SmartSouth, we discuss four basic applications: (1) topology snapshot, (2) anycast, (3) blackhole- and (4) critical node detection.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 13th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks, HotNets 2014
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)9781450332569
DOIs
StatePublished - 27 Oct 2014
Externally publishedYes
Event13th ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks, HotNets 2014 - Los Angeles, United States
Duration: 27 Oct 201428 Oct 2014

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 13th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks, HotNets 2014

Conference

Conference13th ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks, HotNets 2014
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityLos Angeles
Period27/10/1428/10/14

Keywords

  • In-band Mechanisms
  • SDN
  • Troubleshooting

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications

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