OPEN CALL – SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORKING
Figure 2: Transmitted bits per second for the two high level policies (energy efficiency and load balancing), experimenting over the GÉANT testbed.
Figure 1: AUTOFLOW introduces ANM to the GÉANT OpenFlow-enabled facility
II. SYNERGY OF ANM AND SDN
These two emerging technologies share motivation and have confluent goals i.e. better and more efficient control and operation, simplification of network management and control, focus on innovation and differentiation aspects for vendors, CAPEX/OPEX reduction for providers etc. SDN/OpenFlow can be seen as an enabler for simplifying the introduction of autonomics into networks and network management i.e. it can be used to inject and track autonomic functions/loops into the networks, purpose-wise and freely, but at the same time in a well-defined manner (API). On the other side, ANM technologies can provide a management platform for managing SDNs and software network applications featured with autonomics and/or for providing guidelines for developing such autonomic software applications.
III. EXPERIMENTATION FRAMEWORK AND OUTCOMES
AUTOFLOW’s experimentation framework includes three ANM core blocks and two Autonomic Control Loops (ACLs), which interact with the Floodlight controller through the developed Northbound API. Governance, Knowledge and Coordination are realized from the ANM core blocks, while the ACLs are responsible for traffic engineering and load prediction. The ANM Core / ACLs components can be considered in this case as “SDN applications”, where the complete control of the programmable network is rendered feasible with the use of the controller. The conducted experiments have shown that the proposed integration of ANM/SDN allows operators to manage their networks efficiently, (un)deploying ACLs in a “plug and play” way, monitoring network elements in real time and enforcing decisions on run time. There isn’t a strict constraint on the number of ACLs that can operate concurrently, while the enforcement of new rules in the network can be considered as instantaneous (within just a few seconds). Operators may choose the desired high level policy (e.g. energy efficiency, load balancing) and steer the network’s operation respectively (Figure 2).
IV. CONCLUSION The GN3plus project offers a great opportunity for expanding know-how and research achievements in the area of SDN/OpenFlow, through experimenting on a widely recognized, realistic testbed. Taking advantage of this opportunity, AUTOFLOW intends to extend the GÉANT testbed and perform focused research and experimentation in order to demystify the relationship between ANM/SDN and showcase that SDN/OpenFlow capabilities can bring "customizable ANM" into reality.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT his document has been produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of AUTOFLOW and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the EU. The authors would like express their gratitude to Dr. Afrodite Sevasti for her valuable support in the realization of this work.
REFERENCES
[1] AUTOFLOW project website, http://tns.ted.unipi.gr/autoflow/ [2] Autonomic Network Management Principles: From Concepts to Applications, Edited by N Agoulmine, ISBN 978-0-12-382190-4, Elsevier Academic Press Publications 2011 [3] Open Networking Foundation. (2012, Apr.). Software-defined networking: The new norm for networks [Online]. Available: www.opennetworking.org/images/stories/downloads/ whitepapers/wp-sdn-newnorm.pdf [4] Floodlight project web site: http://www.projectfloodlight.org/floodlight/, last accessed 31st of January, 2014
For more information on GÉANT Open Call see www.geant.net/opencall 33