Since OpenFlow was launched to global community, many researchers in the world plunged in this idea to contribute with improvements. The OpenFlow enables networks to evolve, by giving a remote controller the power to modify the behavior of network devices, through a well-defined "forwarding instruction set". The growing OpenFlow ecosystem now includes routers, switches, virtual switches, and access points from a range of vendors. [1]
In Brazil, also there was a mobilization to participate in this endeavor. However, perhaps for the coverage, or the distance from actual campus backbones, the Brazilian research community has a large difficulty in accessing Openflow-based infrastructures. The project EDOBRA came to facilitate for the local researchers to run experimental protocols in the networks they use every day. These experiments include developments with the FINLAN, DTS-based tests, energy efficiency, and integrated multicast and mobility experiments providing a common test infrastructure involving teams in three institutions, ITAv in Aveiro, Portugual, UFU and USP in Brazil. [2]
There are a front with brazillian reserarchers that intends to rethink the networks by separating the software that controls the network from the network elements as such the SDN - Software Defined Networking using the Entity Title Architecture, instance of the Entity Title Model that provide some basic concepts such as the Domain Title Service (DTS) with features like Entity, its Title and a clean slate naming and addressing scheme, where Multicast and Mobility are seamlessly provided. The Title Model is a vision of how entities should be able to semantically specify their requirements and capabilities in order to communicate to each other. They are able to use a specific naming and addressing scheme based on a topology independent name that unambiguously identifies an entity (J. de Souza Pereira et al. [3][4]
A key component of this model is the DTS, a distributed system over the network elements responsible for aiding communicating entities in locating their peers and in negotiating the establishment and maintenance of their conversations, accordingly to the Entity Title Model.
In effect, EDOBRA is bringing together a clean slate network architecture and the experience as OpenFlow and OFELIA users and aims to extend and improve OFELIA by: 1. Extending the capacity of OpenFlow based switches to handle mobility by providing a new OpenFlow OpenWRT with integrated support for the IEEE 802.21 protocol; 2. Providing a new network architecture where multicast and mobility are seamlessly supported, based on an OpenFlow substrate and fully integrated with DTS and 802.21 protocols, thus enabling this new network architecture in interacting seamlessly with different access networks; 3. Increasing the physical extension of OFELIA, deploying news accesses in Brazil; and 4. Improving Future Internet Research and Experimentation by providing these approaches to a broader community, with strong links to Brazilian researchers, by deploying and carrying out multicast, mobility and energy efficency experiments at scale under OFELIA, thus collaborating to shape a Future Internet that would meet actual and future requirements of users and applications, by helping the emerging of innovative and smarter services. [5]
EDOBRA can contribute for SDN, increase the research possibilities with many forms, one these, the support for novel mobility schemes and still, facilitating the inclusion of mobile entities to virtualized test beds.
- References:
- [1] - http://www.openflow.org/
- [2] - EDOBRA - Extending and Deploying Ofelia in BRAzil. Second Open Call. June/2012
- [3] - Silva, Flavio de Oliveria, Joao Henrique de Souza Pereira, Sergio Takeo Kofuji, and Pedro Frosi Rosa. 2011. “Domain Title Service for Future Internet Networks.” In Anais Do II Workshop De Pesquisa Experimental Na Internet Do Futuro (WPEIF). Campo Grande: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação.
- [4] - de Souza Pereira, J.H., S.T. Kofuji, and P.F. Rosa. 2010. “Horizontal Addressing by Title in a Next Generation Internet.” In Networking and Services (ICNS), 2010 Sixth International Conference On, 7 –11. doi:10.1109/ICNS.2010.9.
- [5] - McKeown, Nick, Tom Anderson, Hari Balakrishnan, Guru Parulkar, Larry Peterson, Jennifer Rexford, Scott Shenker, and Jonathan Turner. 2008. “OpenFlow: Enabling Innovation in Campus Networks.” SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev. 38 (2) (March): 69–74. doi:10.1145/1355734.1355746. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1355734.1355746.