Adopt-a-GENI Project Status Report

Period: Post GEC 19 Report

I. Major accomplishments

The following highlights our accomplishments during the last reporting period.

A. Milestones achieved

• Develop the Adopt-A-GENI AAG Controller for managing user-selected paths.

• Demonstrate the use of an OpenFlow Controller to control flow space associated with a user’s slice at GEC19.

B. Deliverables made

• We developed code for initializing the OVS nodes in GENI experiments.

• We implemented an initial version of the Adopt-A-GENI (AAG) controller that can set up the default path in the OVS nodes.

II. Description of work performed during last quarter

The following provides a description of the progress made during the last reporting period.

A. Activities and findings

Our activities this last reporting period have been primarily focused on building an initial version of the AAG controller and developing code for initializing the OVS nodes in GENI experiments.

We developed the AAG Controller based on the ​Open Daylight controller. The main function of the AAG controller is to manage user-selected paths. As the first step, we implemented the fucntion of setting the default paths in the OVS nodes in the GENI experiments. OVS nodes are selected because the current stitching functionality for hardware-based OpenFlow swithes is not well supported.

When a user develops a GENI experiment with OVS nodes, it typically takes multiple steps to initialize the OVS nodes and deploy a controller to control the flow space of these OVS nodes. Users must understand the commands for needed to configure the OVS nodes as well as the ability to configure the rules need by the OpenFlow controller. A key goal of our project is to relieve users from these tasks. To that end, we developed Java code that will initialize the OVS nodes for users. It will configure all interfaces and specify the AAG controller on their behalf. After that the OVS nodes will be able to communicate with the AAG controller in regards to processing of incoming packets.

In order for the AAG controller to set up the default paths at the OVS nodes, we provide the Manifest RSpec of the user experiment to the AAG controller. The AAG controller will then parse the manifest to understand the whole topology of the experiment. The configuration file for running the AAG controller can specify different weights for links such as VLANs and GRE tunnels. The AAG controller then calculates the shortest paths between any pair of source and destination nodes. Based on the shortest paths calculated, it will install these paths at all relevant OVS nodes. These paths are then used as the initial steps for forwarding packets between experimental nodes. The user can select and set a different path in the future.

We demonstrated these features of the AAG project at the GEC 19 conference. The topology is shown in the Figure above. It includes three OVS nodes and three VMs. We added an AAG controller in the topology that controls the flow space at the OVS nodes.

B. Project participants

The following individuals are involved with the project in one way or another:

• Zongming Fei - Project PI (Kentucky)
• Jim Griffioen - Project Co-PI (Kentucky)
• Kobus van der Merwe - Project Co-PI (Utah)
• Rob Ricci - Project Co-PI (Utah)
• Hussamuddin Nasir - Technician/Programmer (Kentucky)
• Jonathon Duerig - Research Associate (Utah)
• Navjeet Sandhu - M.S. Student (Kentucky)
• Amrita Jyotiprada - M.S. Student (Kentucky)

C. Publications (individual and organizational)

• Ping Yi, Zongming Fei, Characterizing the GENI Networks, Proc. of the 3rd GENI Research and Educational Experiment Workshop (GREE 2014), Atlanta, GA, USA, March 19-20, 2014.

D. Outreach activities

• Zongming Fei presented the paper "Characterizing the GENI Networks" at the 3rd GENI Research and Educational Experiment Workshop (GREE 2014) in Atlanta on March 20, 2014.

• We also presented during the demo session at GEC 19 showing our initial AAG controller design.

E. Collaborations

Most of our collaborations have been between the Kentucky team and the Utah team. We had an in-depth discussion on how to move forward with the AAG project at GEC 19 in Atlanta.

F. Other Contributions