Development of Active External Network Topology Module for Floodlight SDN Controller

Abstract

Traditional network architecture is inflexible and complicated. This observation has led to a paradigm shift towards software-defined networking (SDN), where network management level is separated from data forwarding level. This change was made possible by control plane transfer from the switching equipment to software modules that run on a dedicated server, called the controller (or network operating system), or network applications, that work with this controller. Methods of representation, storage and communication interfaces with network topology elements are the most important aspects of network operating systems available to SDN user because performance of some key controller modules is heavily dependent on internal representation of the network topology. Notably, firewall and routing modules are examples of such modules. This article describes the methods used for presentation and storage of network topologies, as well as interface to the corresponding Floodlight modules. An alternative algorithm has been suggested and developed for message exchange conveying network topology alterations between the controller and network applications. Proposed algorithm makes implementation of module alerting based on subscription to the relevant events. API for interaction between controller and network applications has been developed. This algorithm and API formed the base for Topology Tracker module capable to inform network applications about the changes that had occurred in the network topology and also stores compact representation of the network to speed up the interaction process.