FROG4 SDN Domain Orchestrator

This orchestrator supervises an SDN based domain (e.g., OpenFlow devices managed by an ONOS Controller) - constituited only by several switches - and provides traffic steering capabilities between its endpoints. It always affors the possibility to insert simple NFs (such as a NAT) on the flow path (the proper bundle shuld be installed on the SDN Controller)

Traffic Steering

This domain expects to receive endpoint-to-endpoint flowules must be compliant with OpenFlow1.0.

Every flowrule must have one entry endpoint and only one output endpoint (multiple output are not supported!); a flowrule is instantiated into every switch belonging the path between the two endpoints.

Every flow is internally distinguished by a vlan id, in order to avoid ambiguities, duplicities, and other similar troubles into the involved switches.

The "Big Switch"

This domain hides the internal details (switches and the links between them), so it advertises itself as a 'big switch' with several well-defined endpoints.

In particular, as you can see in ./config/ResourceDescription.example.json, for each endpoint we can specify:

• if it is enabled to be used as "entry endpoint";
• all the entry vlan ids, used to match the incoming packets.

A domain administrator has to add and configure the endpoints editing the file ./config/ResourceDescription.json. The final json should be compliant against this YANG data model.

Network Functions

The SDN domain orchestrator also provide the possibility to deploy some NFs (implemented with an SDN application) between endpoints. The SDN application must allow a fine configuration in order to properly set physical interface with which interact. A supported application is this ONOS NAT bundle.

Currently just chains (endpoint to endpoint paths) with up to one NF are supported.

SDN Controllers

This project leans on a SDN controller to have some network informations and for each openflow-based operation (e.g. create and delete flow rules).

Currently, the DO supports ONOS (>= 1.5.0 "Falcon")

Support for OpenDayLight has been deprecated.

DoubleDecker and ResourceDescription.json

To advertise the features and the capabilities of this domain, we use DoubleDecker messaging systems.

In particular, the file ./config/ResourceDescription.json is published under the topic "NF-FG", both at the start of the domain orchestrator and after any database change.

Note: set the appropriate broker address in ./config/default-config.ini.

NF-FG

All the graphs sended via REST API must respect the NF-FG json schema.

Pay specifical attention to the information that are not supported by this domain orchestrator:

• NF to NF links;
• Remote endpoints;
• "TTL" field of the endpoints;
• Flowrule actions with multiple outputs, "output_to_controller" or "output_to_queue".

Note: the nf-fg library is a sub-module of this repository.

Flows priorities:

Due to default Flow rules that are deployed at the ONOS boot with a priority of 40000, if you use ONOS as controller the NFFGs to deploy must have flows with a priority greater or equal than 40001.

REST APIs

A global orchestrator should communicate through the REST APIs provided by this domain orchestrator.

REST interface provides several urls to authenticate, to send/get/delete a graph, to get the status of a graph.

In order to discover which REST calls are supported you can see the API documentation at the URL {do-address:do-port}/api_docs once the domain orchestrator is installed and running (e.g., 127.0.0.1:10000/api_docs).

Use cases

Use cases examples are in the use_cases folder. There, for each use case you can find configuration scripts, NF-FGs and more.