wiki:GENIExperimenter/Tutorials/OpenFlowOVS-Floodlight/Execute

Version 10 (modified by pjayanth@bbn.com, 7 years ago) (diff)

--

Intro to OpenFlow Tutorial

Image Map

Step 4. Execute Experiment

Now that the switch is up and running we are ready to start working on the controller. For this tutorial we are going to use the Floodlight Controller. We installed the software for running Floodlight in the controller host in Configure the Floodlight Controller section.

4a. Login to your hosts

To start our experiment we need to ssh into all of our hosts.

Depending on which tool and OS you are using there is a slightly different process for logging in. If you don't know how to SSH to your reserved hosts learn how to login. Once you have logged in follow the rest of the instructions.

4b. Use a Learning Switch Controller

In this example we are going to run a very simple learning switch controller to forward traffic between host1 and host2.

  1. First start a ping from host1 to host2, which should timeout, since there is no controller running.
ping host2 -c 10
  1. Start the Floodlight Controller by running the following commands:
cd floodlight
java -jar target/floodlight.jar

The output should look like this:

  1. In the terminal of host1, ping host2:
    [pjayant@host1:~$ ping 10.0.0.2
    PING 10.0.0.2 (10.0.0.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=327 ms
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=23.2 ms
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=2.08 ms
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=1.71 ms
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=1.77 ms
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=1.74 ms
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=1.69 ms
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=1.55 ms
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=1.60 ms
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=10 ttl=64 time=1.67 ms
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=11 ttl=64 time=1.73 ms
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=12 ttl=64 time=1.50 ms
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=13 ttl=64 time=1.82 ms
    64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=14 ttl=64 time=1.69 ms
    ^C
    --- 10.0.0.2 ping statistics ---
    14 packets transmitted, 14 received, 0% packet loss, time 13019ms
    rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.501/26.489/327.007/83.532 ms
    

Now the ping should work. You can see that the time for the first ICMP packet is longer than the rest of the ICMP packets. This is because the Open vSwitch consults the controller the first time a packet-in event occurs. The controller then inserts the flow in the Open vSwitch and the switch consults this flow for further packet-in events.

  1. Go to your Open vSwitch host and take a look at the flows. You should see that your controller installed flows based on the mac addresses of your packets. Enter the following command:
pjayant@switch:~$ sudo ovs-ofctl dump-flows br0
NXST_FLOW reply (xid=0x4):
 cookie=0x20000005000000, duration=4.782s, table=0, n_packets=4, n_bytes=392, idle_timeout=5, idle_age=0, priority=1,ip,in_port=2,dl_src=02:55:0d:1e:32:8d,dl_dst=02:bd:52:92:0e:86,nw_src=10.0.0.2,nw_dst=10.0.0.1 actions=output:1
 cookie=0x20000004000000, duration=4.790s, table=0, n_packets=4, n_bytes=392, idle_timeout=5, idle_age=0, priority=1,ip,in_port=1,dl_src=02:bd:52:92:0e:86,dl_dst=02:55:0d:1e:32:8d,nw_src=10.0.0.1,nw_dst=10.0.0.2 actions=output:2
 cookie=0x0, duration=1275.644s, table=0, n_packets=6, n_bytes=512, idle_age=4, priority=0 actions=CONTROLLER:65535

4c. Look around your OVS switch

  1. To see messages go between your switch and your controller, open a new ssh window to your controller node and run tcpdump on the eth1 interface and on the tcp port that your controller is listening on usually 6653. (You can also run tcpdump on the OVS control interface if you desire.)
    sudo tcpdump -i eth1 tcp port 6653
    
    You will see (1) periodic keepalive messages being exchanged by the switch and the controller, (2) messages from the switch to the controller (e.g. when there is a table miss) and an ICMP Echo message in, and (3) messages from the controller to the switch (e.g. to install new flow entries).
  1. Kill your Floodlight controller by pressing Ctrl-C:
    2016-10-30 21:00:47.333 INFO  [n.f.l.i.LinkDiscoveryManager] Sending LLDP packets out of all the enabled ports
    2016-10-30 21:01:02.339 INFO  [n.f.l.i.LinkDiscoveryManager] Sending LLDP packets out of all the enabled ports
    2016-10-30 21:01:17.344 INFO  [n.f.l.i.LinkDiscoveryManager] Sending LLDP packets out of all the enabled ports
    ^C
    pjayant@controller:~/floodlight$
    
  1. Notice what happens to your ping on host1.
  1. If you are using OVS, check the flow table entries on your switch:
    sudo ovs-ofctl dump-flows br0
    
    Since you set your switch to "secure" mode, i.e. don't forward packets if the controller fails, you will not see flow table entries. If you see flow table entries, try again after 10 seconds to give the entries time to expire.

Soft vs Hard Timeouts

All rules on the switch have two different timeouts:

  • Soft Timeout: This determines for how long the flow will remain in the forwarding table of the switch if there are no packets received that match the specific flow. As long as packets from that flow are received the flow remains on the flow table.
  • Hard Timeout: This determines the total time that a flow will remain at the forwarding table, independent of whether packets that match the flow are received; i.e. the flow will be removed after the hard timeout expires.

Can you tell now why there were packets flowing even after you killed your controller?

4e. Debugging your Controller

While you are developing your controller, some useful debugging tools are:

i. Print messages

Run your controller in verbose mode (add --verbose) and add print messages at various places to see what your controller is seeing.

ii. Check the status in the switch

If you are using an OVS switch, you can dump information from your switch. For example, to dump the flows:

sudo ovs-ofctl dump-flows br0

Two other useful commands show you the status of your switch:

sudo ovs-vsctl show 
sudo ovs-ofctl show br0

iii. Use Wireshark to see the OpenFlow messages

Many times it is useful to see the OpenFlow messages being exchanged between your controller and the switch. This will tell you whether the messages that are created by your controller are correct and will allow you to see the details of any errors you might be seeing from the switch. You can use wireshark on both ends of the connection, in hardware switches you have to rely only on the controller view.

The controller host and OVS has wireshark installed, including the openflow dissector. For more information on wireshark you can take a look at the wireshark wiki.

Here we have a simple case of how to use the OpenFlow dissector for wireshark.

If you are on a Linux friendly machine (this includes MACs) open a terminal and ssh to your controller machine using the -Y command line argument, i.e.

ssh -Y <username>@<controller>

Assuming that the public IP address on the controller is eth0, run wireshark by typing:

sudo wireshark -i eth0&

When the wireshark window pops up, you might still have to choose eth0 for a live capture. And you will want to use a filter to cut down on the chatter in the wireshark window. One such filter might be just seeing what shows up on port 6633. To do that type tcp.port eq 6633 in the filter window, assuming that 6633 is the port that the controller is listening on. And once you have lines, you can choose one of the lines and choose "Decode as ...." and choose the OFP protocol.

4f. Topology Details

Before we insert flows into the Open vSwitch, we are going to need all the details regarding the topology such as the DPID of the Open vSwitch, MAC addresses of the hosts, the port numbers on which the Hosts are connected to the Open vSwitch etc. These details can be found out by issuing the command:

curl http://localhost:8080/wm/device/ | python -m json.tool

In the output, we obtain a list of the devices that Floodlight Controller has learned about. Make sure you ping Host 2 & Host 3 from Host 1 before you issue this command. My output is pasted below. YOURS WILL BE DIFFERENT.

4f. Run a traffic duplication controller

In the above example we ran a very simple learning switch controller.
The power of OpenFlow comes from the fact that you can decide to forward the packet anyway you want based on the supported OpenFlow actions. A very simple but powerful modification you can do, is to duplicate all the traffic of the switch out a specific port. This is very useful for application and network analysis. You can imagine that at the port where you duplicate traffic you connect a device that does analysis. For this tutorial we are going to verify the duplication by doing tcpdump on two ports on the OVS switch.

  1. Use the interfaces that are connected to host2 and host3.
    • Software Switch (OVS): If you have not noted them down you can use the manifest and the MAC address of the interfaces (ovs:if1 and ovs:if2) to figure this out. But you should have noted down the interfaces in Section 2 when you were configuring the software switch. Run tcpdump on these interfaces; one in each of the two ovs terminals you opened. This will allow you to see all traffic going out the interfaces.

To see that duplication is happening, on the ovs host, run:

sudo tcpdump -i <data_interface_name>  [data_interface to host2]
sudo tcpdump -i <data_interface_name>  [data_interface to host3]

You should see traffic from host1 to host2 showing up in the tcpdump window for host3. As a comparison, you will notice that no traffic shows up in that window when the controller is running the learning switch.

  1. In the controller host directory /tmp/pox/ext you should see two files:
  1. myDuplicateTraffic.py : This is the file that has instructions about how to complete the missing information. Go ahead and try to implement your first controller.
  2. DuplicateTraffic.py : This has the actual solution. You can just run this if you don't want to bother with writing a controller.
  1. Run your newly written controller on the <data_interface_name> that corresponds to OVS:if2 (which is connected to host3):
    cd /tmp/pox
    ./pox.py --verbose DuplicateTraffic --duplicate_port=?
    

For example, if OVS:if2 corresponds to "eth1", enter

./pox.py --verbose myDuplicateTraffic --duplicate_port=eth1

  1. To test it go to the terminal of host1 and try to ping host2:
    ping 10.10.1.2
    
    If your controller is working, your packets will register in both terminals running tcpdump.
  1. Stop the POX controller:
    DEBUG:DuplicateTraffic:Got a packet : [02:f1:ae:bb:e3:a8>02:c7:e8:a7:40:65 IP]
    DEBUG:SimpleL2Learning:installing flow for 02:f1:ae:bb:e3:a8.2 -> 02:c7:e8:a7:40:65.[1, 2]
    
    INFO:core:Going down...
    INFO:openflow.of_01:[3a-51-a1-ab-c3-43 1] disconnected
    INFO:core:Down.
    

4g. Run a port forward Controller

Now let's do a slightly more complicated controller. OpenFlow gives you the power to overwrite fields of your packets at the switch, for example the TCP source or destination port and do port forwarding. You can have clients trying to contact a server at port 5000, and the OpenFlow switch can redirect your traffic to a service listening on port 6000.

  1. Under the /tmp/pox/ext directory there are two files: PortForwarding.py and myPortForwarding.py that are similar like the previous exercise. Both of these controller are configured by a configuration file at ext/port_forward.config. Use myPortForwarding.py to write your own port forwarding controller.
  1. To test your controller we are going to use netcat. Go to the two terminals of host2. In one terminal run:
    nc -l 5000
    

and in the other terminal run

nc -l 6000
  1. Now, start the simple layer 2 forwarding controller. We are doing this to see what happens with a simple controller.
    cd /tmp/pox
    ./pox.py --verbose forwarding.l2_learning
    
  1. Go to the terminal of host1 and connect to host2 at port 5000:
    nc 10.10.1.2 5000
    

  1. Type something and you should see it at the the terminal of host2 at port 5000.
  1. Now, stop the simple layer 2 forwarding controller:
    DEBUG:forwarding.l2_learning:installing flow for 02:d4:15:ed:07:4e.3 -> 02:ff:be:1d:19:ea.2
    
    INFO:core:Going down...
    INFO:openflow.of_01:[36-63-8b-d7-16-4b 1] disconnected
    INFO:core:Down.
    
  1. And start your port forwarding controller (if you have written your controller then use myPortForwarding in the following command):
    ./pox.py --verbose PortForwarding
    
  1. Repeat the netcat scenario described above. Now, your text should appear on the other terminal of host2 which is listening to port 6000.
  1. Stop your port forwarding controller:
    DEBUG:myPortForwarding:Got a packet : [02:aa:a3:e8:6c:db>33:33:ff:e8:6c:db IPV6]
    
    INFO:core:Going down...
    INFO:openflow.of_01:[36-63-8b-d7-16-4b 1] disconnected
    INFO:core:Down.
    

4h. Run a Server Proxy Controller

As our last exercise, instead of diverting the traffic to a different server running on the same host, we will divert the traffic to a server running on a different host and on a different port.

  1. Under the /tmp/pox/ext/ directory there are two files: Proxy.py and myProxy.py that are similar like the previous exercise. Both of these controllers are configured by the configuration file proxy.config. Use myProxy.py to write your own proxy controller.
  1. On the terminal of host3 run a netcat server:
    nc -l 7000
    
  1. On your controller host, open the /tmp/pox/ext/myProxy.py file, and edit it to implement a controller that will divert traffic destined for host2 to host3. Before you start implementing think about what are the side effects of diverting traffic to a different host.
    • Is it enough to just change the IP address?
    • Is it enough to just modify the TCP packets?

If you want to see the solution, it's available in file /tmp/pox/ext/Proxy.py file.

  1. To test your proxy controller run (if you have written your controller then use myProxy in the following command)::
    cd /tmp/pox
    ./pox.py --verbose Proxy
    
  1. Go back to the terminal of host1 and try to connect netcat to host2 port 5000
    nc 10.10.1.2 5000
    
  1. If your controller works correctly, you should see your text showing up on the terminal of host3.

4i. Delete your bridge

Before moving to the next step make sure you delete the bridge you have created, especially if you are using the same reservation for a different exercise:

  sudo ovs-vsctl del-br br0

Prev: Design and Setup for OVS

Next: Finish

Attachments (2)

Download all attachments as: .zip