Assessment of SDN technology for an easy-to-use VPN service

Abstract

This paper describes how state-of-the-art SDN technology can be used to create and validate a user configurable, on-demand VPN service. In the Community Connection (CoCo) project an architecture for the VPN service was designed and a prototype was developed based on the OpenFlow protocol and the OpenDaylight controller. The CoCo prototype enables automatic setup and tear down of CoCo instances (VPNs) by end-users via an easy to use web portal, without needing the help of network administrators to do manual configuration of the network switches. Users from the research community, amongst others, expressed their interest in using such an easy-to-use VPN service for on-demand interconnection of their eScience resources (servers, VMs, laptops, storage, scientific instruments, etc.) that may only be reachable for their closed group. The developed CoCo prototype was validated in an SDN testbed and via Mininet simulation. Using the calibrated Mininet simulation the impact was analysed for larger scale deployments of the CoCo prototype.