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SDN Management
Layer
DESIGN REQUIREMENTS AND FUTURE DIRECTION
NO OF SLIDES : 26
Summary
Computer networks are becoming increasingly complex and difficult to manage.
Therefore, the aim of Software Define Network is to develop a general
management paradigm that is able to hide the details of the physical
infrastructure and enable flexible network management. In SDN, the network is
considered to have two components including control plane and data plane.
However, those two planes are working separately. This paper reviewed existing
SDN management layers and identifies new approach in developing such
management architectures.
Firstly, The heart of management architecture for SDN networks is management
layer that performs indirect operation of monitoring and controlling network by
providing a programming interface to management applications. Within this
architecture, a protocol called Open Flow provides management layer access to
switch process as well as flexibility to adapt the configuration of routers and
switches from different vendors. Secondly, design requirements of the
management layer for Open Flow-based SDN networks requirements that should
be supported by the management layer, and the architectural components
needed to meet these requirements. Finally, a new architecture called Recursive
Internetwork can be used to solve the existing problems..
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Outline
I.
Introduction
II.
Management Architecture for SDN Networks
III.
Design Requirements of Management Layer
IV.
Proposed Approach: RINA Architecture
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I. Introduction

Software Defined
Networking (SDN) enables
programmable networks.
Compared to traditional
networks, SDN separates
the network into two
different planes: a control
plane and a data plane:

Control plane: how to
handle and forward
traffic?

Data plane: Forward
data traffic towards
destination.
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Benefits of SDN
Inexpensive
 Centralized
 Dynamic
 Optimized
 Load Balancing
 Fault Tolerant

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II. Management Architecture for
SDN Networks

The heart of management
architecture for SDN networks is
management layer.

Management layers performs indirect
operation of monitoring and
controlling network by providing a
programming interface to
management applications.
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A. Management Architecture
Overview

Network devices: Includes switches and
routers

Network Device Interface : Provides
accessibility to switches via switch process

Controller process: Provide network
monitoring and control functionalities.

Network Management Interface: It is
exposed by management layer for user
application process to manage the
network.
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B. OpenFlow-based SDN networks

Open Flow is a protocol that
provides management layer access
to switch process.

Provides flexibility to adapt the
configuration of routers and switches
from different vendors.

It enables easy programming of
hardware without being exposed to
internal details of devices.
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C. Administrator-level interface and
User-level interface

Network management layer provides two
separate interfaces: administrator-level interface
and user-level interface.

The administrator-level interface is provided to
the network administrator who uses it to
manage, monitor and control the network as a
whole.

The user-level interface is provided to the end
user which can use it to manage specific
applications such as video conferencing.
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D. Policy-based Network
Management and scope

In SDN, network management is expressed in term of “high layer”
policies rather than the traditional low-level vendor-specific network
device configurations.
Advantages
Simplifying
management
Reducing
programming
complexity
Allow businessdriven network
configurations
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III. Design Requirements of
Management Layer

Design requirements of the management layer for Open Flowbased SDN networks

requirements that should be supported by the management layer,
and the architectural components needed to meet these
requirements
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A. A Global Network View and
General API

A basic requirement of the management layer is
to provide a global network view and offer a
general API

NOX – First open flow management platform that
met such requirement

The global view of NOX includes the switch-level
topology, and the location of users, hosts and
services.
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NOX API
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B. Distributed Controllers

Distribute the management layer to run distributed
controllers.

Onix consists of multiple Onix instances

Flexible network state distribution primitives.

Address the scalability issue

Maintains NIB
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C. Network Virtualization

Network virtualization provides support for multiple isolated virtual
networks to be built on top of the same physical network.

it can improve resource utilization of the physical network

it can be used to build (virtual) testbeds that provide a safe and
realistic environment for developing and testing.
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FlowVisor

Transparent proxy between user-defined guest
controllers and switches.

It enables multiple NOX controllers to share the
same switches.

Each guest controller has full control over its sub
scope, or so-called network slice

FlowVisor provides transparency and isolation
between slices by inspecting, rewriting and
policing OpenFlow messages that it receives
from guest controllers.
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D. User-level Interface Support

PANE is a centralized management layer that directly
delegates read and write authority from the network
administrator to end-user by providing a user-level
interface

Concept of participatory networks

PANE uses NIB to store network elements and their
states
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Concepts in the PANE API
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IV. Proposed Approach: RINA
Architecture
Problems of existing SDN
management layers

weak QoS support and manageability

A better approach is to build a management
architecture on top of a new network
architecture that avoids the shortcomings of the
TCP/IP architecture
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Recursive Internetwork Architecture
(RINA)

RINA has two main design principles:
1. divide and conquer (recursion)
2. separation of mechanisms and policies

RINA simplifies the network system by using only two
policy-configurable protocols:
1. the Common Distributed Application Protocol
(CDAP)
2. the Error and Flow Control Protocol (EFCP)
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Characteristics of RINA

RINA provides better manageability support with scoping

RINA supports QoS through the RINA API to connect application
processes

Southbound API and Northbound API are merely replaced by the
unified and recursive RINA API, which provides a high level (both
administrative and user) interface

RINA management architecture does not build upon existing SDN
(or traditional) network architectures.
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FCAPS Links

We can say that the idea of SDN is closely
related to Configuration management because
SDN after all is dictating the way network
devices are configured through a softwaredefined layer rather than the traditional non-SDN
way.

RINA is related to performance since it was
proposed to improve the QoS of the networks.
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Conclusion

Our opinion about RINA
1.Reasonable conception but not proven
2.Further analysis and improvement
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Opinion about the Paper

The paper was very informative and cleared great amounts of aspects of
SDN.

It provided clear view regarding the use of OpenFlow protocol and design
requirements of SDN.
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Reference

Wang, Y. and Matta, I. SDN Management Layer: Design
Requirements and Future Direction. Network Protocols (ICNP), IEEE
22nd International Conference, pp.555 - 562. Oct, 2014
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