Leveraging the Power of Software Defined Paradigm to Control Communication in a Network

Abstract

Objective : The numerous protocols and products in the existing network architecture not just complicates the network, but also require that the administrators master the intricacies of configuring the hardware and software, setting the rules, and monitoring and creating reports. In this paper, we present a component that can control the communication between devices from a single point. Methods: In this paper, we present a component developed using Python and OpenFlow protocol over POX controller. This is a layer 3-layer 4 component that converts all the switches in a software defined network to filtering devices thus functioning as a communication blocker or packet filter between machines in the network. Findings: Our test results show that this component is distributive and topology independent and functions without degrading the performance of the controller. Improvement: To the best of our knowledge, our component is one of the first for POX controller since it is topology independent, restrictive, and functions on the basis of IP addresses and not by blocking of MAC addresses.