wiki:EnterpriseGENI/1Q11

Version 14 (modified by Srini Seetharaman, 13 years ago) (diff)

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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.