NFV Tutorial: Managing a Virtual Network Function using SDN and Control Theory

Overview

This is a basic tutorial that guides you through an experiment using OpenFlow and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). It is recommended that you first read about ​OpenFlow and go over a basic ​OpenFlow tutorial on GENI. The goal of this tutorial is to give you a hands-on experience with OpenFlow, and how it can be used for NFV deployment. Using a basic topology, which contains two sources, a destination, two virtual network functions (IDS), an OVS and a controller, we will show how different OpenFlow rules can be used for NFV management. Once resources are reserved for this topology, the tutorial should take about 45-60 minutes to complete.

Figure 1: The image above depicts the network topology used in this tutorial.

Prerequisites:

• A GENI account, if you don't have one sign up!
  
• Familiarity with how to reserve GENI resources (we will be using the GENI Experimenter Portal as our tool).
  
• Familiarity with logging into GENI compute resources.
  
• Basic understanding of OpenFlow. An OpenFlow tutorial is here!
  
• Familiarity with the Unix command line.
  
• Familiarity with the Python programming language. We will use a controller (POX controller) written in Python for this tutorial.
  
• You will need to be a member of a project.
  

Another version of this tutorial using the ​Ryu controller is also provided, and details can be found here .

Tools

• ​Open vSwitch
  
• ​POX controller

Both of the tools are already installed on the machines where the resources are provided. If it happens not to be installed, take a look at the following tutorials to learn how to install these tools:
Open vSwitch
​POX controller

Where to get help:

​POX Wiki
​Open vSwitch
​GENI Wiki

Tutorial Instruction

	Part I: Design/Setup Step 1: Design the experiment Step 2: Establish the environment Step 3: Obtain resources
	Part II: Execute Step 1: Login to VMs Step 2: Configure and initialize services Step 3: Execute expriment
	Part III: Finish Step 1: Teardown Experiment Step 2: Release resources