reading.txt
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In Kim and Feamster’s practical, “Improving Network Management with Software Defined Networking,” Kim and Feamster describe the drawbacks of proprietary networking devices/protocols and how software defined networking remedies some of these problems. Because software defined networking gives a common interface into variable hardware, provides a high-level language for configuration, and allows network rules to be defined and modified more quickly, SDN is a viable and beneficial alternative to using proprietary solutions. In the introduction, Kim and Feamster describe in more detail the challenges posed by network administration. I personally have experienced this when I worked at a steel plant. There were thirty-plus routers distributed across more than a quarter mile-long campus. The process for maintaining the routers was to keep track of all of their IP’s, physical locations, and vendor-specific configuration files. We would telnet into the switches to check their health, update their configurations, etc. Everything had to be done through the command line. To make matters more complicated, some of the switches were manufactured by HP and others by Cisco. The different makes and models of switch often had different procedures for accessing them, updating them, commands for checking status, and configuration file syntax. Therefore, I can imagine how a unified Software Defined Networking system would eliminate these difficulties and make administration much easier. First, Kim and Feamster describe the (southbound) OpenFlow interface and various tools designed to allow developers to program against OpenFlow-capable switches. Such tools allow operators to write logic for the controller layer in high level languages such as Java and Python. In contrast, they next describe a northbound interface which they designed called Procera, which focuses around policies and reacting to events. Users of Procera can define rules that function based on time, data usage, privilege (status), and flow. Procera allows for custom event sources to be defined, such as an intrusion detection system, and is flexible in that it can accept a variety of data formats. Furthermore, Procera also uses a policy engine which processes the events and performs actions based on the policy language. Also, procera provides the network controller which controls packet-forwarding to switches. Because Procera was developed at Georgia Tech, it was tested implementing it throughout their campus. Because a college campus has many users and policy requirements, it is a sufficient environment to test the rigor of Procera in. Procera can also be applied to home networks. Kim and Feamster explored integrating Procera into the system BISmark which allows for data collection and monitoring of home networks. In conclusion, software defined networking greatly simplifies administrating large-scale networks by allowing policy to be reactive, controlled by high-level languages, and uniform across types of switches. |