Quarterly Report - Q1, 2011

OpenFlow Specification

• OpenFlow spec worked in collaboration with industry partners such as Google, Deutsche Telekom, France Telekom, HP, NEC, Marvell and Broadcom.
• We released ver1.1 of the specification with support for
  • Multiple tables: An OpenFlow switch can now expose multiple tables to a controller.
  • Multipath (Port groups): OpenFlow now supports the notion of "multipath" where a flow can be sent over one of several paths.
  • Tags/tunnels: Tag support has been extended to include MPLS shim headers. VLAN tag handling has been modified to support packets with multiple VLAN tags (Q-in-Q encapsulation). Support has been added for tunnels via virtual ports.
• ​Complete 1.1 Spec
• Individual test cases and patches available in different development branches of OpenVSwitch and oftest

Software

Stanford University currently manages the following software packages for the OpenFlow aggregate:

OpenFlow reference implementation

• No changes

Indigo firmware

• Released support for Pronto 3240 and 3290
• Released Indigo-1.0 firmware with GUI configuration support
• Fixed VLAN tag processing issue in Indigo

Debugging/monitoring tools

• Released Measurement box flash image and Scripts to run on server. This allows measuring and plotting (Time Series & CDF) the following metrics:
  • Flow Setup Time
  • Ping RTT & Loss
  • browsing delay
  • Switch CPU usage
  • Traffic Volume
  • # of Active Flows
  • Flow arrival rate

FlowVisor

• Feature enhancements
  • added msg statistics, see fvctl get{Slice,Switch}Stats
  • added flow tracking, see fvctl get{Switch,SliceRewrite}FlowDB
  • lots of performance improvements
  • flow setup time significantly improved
  • better error handling in create slice and change flowspace
• Bug Fixes
  • fixed big I/O bug that caused switch flapping
  • password prompt no longer echos plaintext
  • changed drop rule policy from FS to packet
  • fixed NPE in FVSlicer

Expedient and Opt-in Manager

• Feature Upgrades
  • Allow users to specify hex or decimal numbers in the Flowspace entry page in the GUI
  • Ensure that created projects get owners
  • Add timer jobs to Expedient
  • Add expiration to slices
  • Add periodic updates of aggregates at Expedient
• Bug fixes
  • Fixed several bugs identified during GEC9

SNAC

• Feature Enhancements
  • Support for 64-bit datapathid
  • Support for STP exposed by HP switches
  • Handling link failures
  • CentOS RPM released
• Bug Fixes
  • Better working with NEC product firmware
  • Handling corrupt packets

NOX

• Regular bug fixes and patched to NOX-Zaku
  • Discovery works with 64 bit DPIDs, XID generation fixes, potential segfault with bad config file fixed, updated some third party code, fixed action parsing in flow stats messages
  • Debugging routing component issue
• Several fixes to NOX-Destiny that will be packaged into a main release in another month
  • Improved logging: More configurable
  • Improved builds: Cleaner builds on more up-to-date systems
  • Python improvements: Better Python OpenFlow support (barriers, flow stats, XIDs, the enqueue action, actions in flow stats events, etc.)

Stanford deployments

• We manage three networks:
  • Demo network
    • Building regression tests to check on stability of the network
    • Upgraded FlowVisor to make things more stable
    • Replaced NECSW5 with HPSW4 in the demo network and updated existing slices
    • Introduced more experiments through expedient
  • Production wired network
    • Deployed BigSwitch controller and did extensive testing in production setting
    • Introduced FlowVisor to conduct experiments in wired network
  • Production wireless network
    • Experimenting with the NEC Helios controller
    • Upgraded FlowVisor
• We support deployments in two other production networks
  • Gates
    • Setup a VMWare server with BigSwitch controller running in the VM
    • This will be used for VLAN74 in overall Gates network, after first round of testing
  • CIS/CIX
    • Created an OpenFlow network with 6 switch, 3 WiFi APs and 1 dedicated monitoring box
    • Uplink to Gates building network. Currently supporting 40 classroom users

Support other campuses

• Helping campuses deploy new software
  • Upgraded Expedient and FlowVisor on all campuses
• Testing controllers from BigSwitch and NEC on behalf of the campus and sharing our experience
• Interact with campuses to obtain feature requirements for SNAC
  • The main request was to introduce VLAN partitioning in the controller

Pronto Switch donation

We started a solicitation for proposals to jumpstart OpenFlow production deployments through donation of Pronto switches. Based on several rounds of review, we donated close to 31 switches to the following institutions:

• MAX Gigapop (PIs: Abdella Battou, Balasubramania N. Pillai)
• RENCI - Renaissance Computing Institute (PI: Ilia Baldine)
• Kansas State University - ECE Dept (PIs: Caterina Scoglio, Don Gruenbacher)
• North Carolina State University (PI: Rudra Dutta)
• Duke University (PI: Jeff Chase)
• University of North Carolina (PI: Don Smith)
• North Carolina Central University (PIs: R. N. Uma, Donghyun David Kim, and Alade Tokuta)
• Clemson University (PIs: Kuang-Ching Wang, Richard Brooks, Haiying Shen, and Sebastien Goasguen)
• Georgia Institute of Technology (PIs: Nick Feamster, Russell Clark)
• University of Arizona (PIs: Srini Ramasubramanian)

​More details

GEC10 activities

Demo

• We supported BBN's demo "GENI For Everyone" which dynamically created multiple slices across Stanford, BBN, GaTech and Indiana aggregates. The host traffic was routed through NLR and Internet2.

Tutorial

• In GEC10, we organized a tutorial for training campus operators and researchers to deploy OpenFlow. It was very successful and attended by nearly 45 people.
  • ​More details