ACM SIGCOMM 2013, August 12-16, 2013, Hong Kong, China
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Software-Defined Networking

LT5 (2/F), Yasumoto International Academic Park, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Monday, August 12, 2013 (full day)

Presented by: David Erickson, Nikhil Handigol, Brandon Heller, Peyman Kazemian (Stanford)

Technical Program

  • 9:00-9:30 Introduction to SDN

  • History of SDN and OpenFlow.

    The pieces of the SDN stack.

    How SDN differs from traditional networks.

    Brief Use cases, covering research and business.

  • 9:30-10:30 Exercise: Play with OpenFlow

  • Setup the VirtualBox-VM environment.

    Use the Mininet emulator and see:

    (1) what OpenFlow messages are exchanged between the switches and the controller, and

    (2) how the switch flow-tables get populated.

  • 10:30-10:45 Coffee Break

  • 10:45-11:15 SDN Switches

  • Required features of an SDN switch.

    Switch design axes.

    The OpenFlow switch abstraction as an example SDN switch.

    How OpenFlow is different from the traditional command-line interface (CLI).

    Overview of OpenFlow versions and how they differ in terms of the features.

  • 11:15-11:30 SDN Controllers Intro

  • How a controller operates.

  • 11:30-12:30 Exercise: Build a Controller

  • Turn a simple hub controller application into a learning switch, and then into a flow-based learning switch.

  • 12:30-14:00 Lunch Break

  • 14:00-14:30 SDN Controller Design

  • Design axes for controllers.

    Comparison of available open-source and commercial controllers.

    Performance considerations for controllers.

  • 14:30-15:40 Exercise: Slicing

  • Introduction to FlowVisor.

    Use FlowVisor to slice one network into two: 1) based on physical topology and 2) based on flowspace.

  • 15:40-16:00 Coffee Break

  • 16:00-16:30 SDN Applications

  • SDN motivations and applications in the data center, enterprise, and WAN.

    Examples of new network capabilities that SDN architecture and associated tools/platforms enable.

  • 16:30-17:10 SDN Futures

  • Core features of SDN: abstractions, structured state, and state semantics.

    The direction that SDN is going, to fully use these aspects.

    Major research developments in SDN.

  • 17:10-17:15 Wrap-up

Email the Organizers

About the Presenters

Brandon Heller

Brandon Heller is a Stanford CS student nearing the completion of his PhD (expected in June 2013). Involved in OpenFlow before it had that name, he served as main editor of the OpenFlow spec for three years. Brandon has led 7 tutorials for SDN, and his more recent projects include energy-efficient data centers (ElasticTree) and flexible network emulation (Mininet). He is currently a consultant and course instructor at SDN Academy.

David Erickson

David Erickson is a PhD Candidate in Professor Nick McKeown’s research group at Stanford University, graduating in June 2013. David has been a contributor to the OpenFlow specification and reference software since the beginning of 2008. David is the original author of the NetFPGA OpenFlow switch software, the OpenFlowJ bindings library for Java, and the Beacon OpenFlow controller. His research uses Software Defined Networking to improve virtualized data center performance by including network knowledge and control in virtual machine placement algorithms. David is currently a consultant and course instructor at SDN Academy.

Nikhil Handigol

Nikhil Handigol is a PhD candidate in Professor Nick McKeown’s research group in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, graduating in June 2013. His research at Stanford focuses on SDN and the architecture of the future Internet. He has been involved with OpenFlow since 2008. In particular, his PhD dissertation work focuses on using Software-Defined Networking to systematically debug and troubleshoot networks. He is also a core member of the Mininet development team and has contributed extensively to Mininet 2.0, the high-fidelity network emulator. He is also the creator of Aster*x, the OpenFlow-based load-balancing application, which he demonstrated on a US-wide OpenFlow network in 2010. He received his B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India in 2008. Nikhil is currently a consultant and course instructor at SDN Academy.

Peyman Kazemian

Peyman Kazemian is receiving his PhD from Stanford University in June 2013 where he was advised by Prof. Nick McKeown. He has been involved with the OpenFlow project since 2008 and his main research focus is on network and SDN testing, debugging and troubleshooting. Peyman is currently a consultant and instructor in SDN Academy.