maheshdananjaya
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SDN (Software Defined Networks) is becoming the next breakthrough of the networking & data forwarding technology which will result in the highly controlled, monitored & supervised network control with efficient centralized SDN controller functions. SDN three tier architecture has already proven performances with the deployment of various network applications on distributed data forwarding plane with the help of SDN control. This revolution will result in the SDN based clouds, core networks, carrier networks in the near future. Most important impact on this transition is that guarantee and trust build on networks with SDN while the traditional legacy network approach is co-existing with the SDN networks while boosting the SDN network performances. Therefore the smooth transition should happens all along with the conventional networks and the SDN compatible devices should be capable of handling this transition. When we consider SDN network perspective the network functions and protocol stack that are running on the single network node is distinguished from the legacy approaches. As a matter of pushing control function in to more centralized and global plane and network node itself act as a data forwarding plane, the way we define the network nodes is changed. As a result more and more protocols running on the SDN controller & network node act as forwarding plane according to commands given by the SDN controller. This may change whole network architecture of running each and every protocol on every single network node. Result is reduction of network control functions and protocols from network node and more applications and application oriented functions are running on the network node. As a SDN emerges SDN switch can act as a multi-layer forwarding plane and even act as a firewall. Therefore SDN switch should be capable of handling more & more application oriented task commanded by the SDN controller, which are alarmed to SDN controller by SDN top tier: Application layer.
All along of the SDN advancement nowadays we are focusing on integrating some advanced network security solutions and applications such as Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Deep packet Inspection (DPI), Intrusion Detection & Prevention systems (IDS & IPS) into SDN switch architecture instead of tradition control protocols that were exhausted by the distributed controlling. Thus we need to make leverages on scalability, flexibility, programmability & security on SDN architecture by supporting hybrid solutions till the transition period till transition ends. Even though the even SDN exist upon the traditional layered architecture implicitly, we need to exploit that when we come application support. There are lots f network processors exist currently on the market and also SDN data planes are also coming to the market very often nowadays. But still we have a big problem catering SDN traffic specifically to exploit its performance while moving to pure green field SDN concept. Therefore compatibility, adoptability and specific solutions will result in SDN accelerations. Therefore SDN aware network processor which can be extended to pure SDN environment with the compatibility to more customized SDN data forwarding plane will be needed in the future.
Trending network processors have lots of customized functions and instructions for the network applications. As well as different implementations with pipelines and parallel architectures. In our research we mostly use openflow as a southbound protocol. Therefore our processor is mostly openflow aware network processor which can be extended to hybrid openflow architecture and compatible with separate data forwarding plane hardware module. In SDN environment the network processor act as a more application oriented platform to give various SDN services over SDN data plane. Most of the controlling functions are embedded into the SDN controller. With the internal intelligence of the processor, dumb SDN data plane can act as a separate module rather processor in embedded inside the data plane. Advantage is more control protocols are being pushed into SDN central control plane while some amount of SDN functionalities and protocol support survive within processor inside SDN switch. Still bottleneck of the SDN network is scalability and high throughput of the system as well as network security. Compatible SDN aware network processor can reduce the exhausting general purpose functions and more legacy network oriented functions out of processor and give responsibility to SDN control plane for that while emerging more SDN oriented network functionalities to scale up the SDN network with customized architecture. Therefore our research is basically focusing on how we can make leverages on SDN customizations with more SDN aware functionalities to support this scalability and high throughput. We see some SDN data planes has arrived to market so SDN aware network processor that can support those data forwarding with some intelligence is paramount important to the growth of SDN.
Major functionalities that we try to achieve using this processor.
Because of the SDN architecture we can reduce the exhaustive and processing time & resources intensive some tasks such as,
Our ISA is based on the above mentioned network requirement which reduce some exhaustive network functions and improve some SDN functionalities to accelerate the SDN data forwarding plane. OpenFlow aware processor should contain SDN/OPENFLOW support instructions. Even though we design 32 bit processor sometimes we need to go to act like a conventional 8 bit processor because when we comes to network environment we have various fields consist of different number of lengths. In SDN environment those are important because lots of classifications, comparisons, modifications of various fields with different lengths are taken place. Therefore our RISC instruction set contains more specific instructions for network functions as well as SDN functions that can work with our data plane.
By few years almost all the big companies will move into SDN solutions and highly visualized application environment. Therefore there will lots of opportunities in the future for SDN and we can have more perfomances and better security than these legacy solutions. Networks will have better management and monitoring capabilities than now. So moving to SDN aware processor and network infrastructure development is extremely a novel area that will be going to change the world.
Written by
Mahesh Dananjaya
All along of the SDN advancement nowadays we are focusing on integrating some advanced network security solutions and applications such as Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Deep packet Inspection (DPI), Intrusion Detection & Prevention systems (IDS & IPS) into SDN switch architecture instead of tradition control protocols that were exhausted by the distributed controlling. Thus we need to make leverages on scalability, flexibility, programmability & security on SDN architecture by supporting hybrid solutions till the transition period till transition ends. Even though the even SDN exist upon the traditional layered architecture implicitly, we need to exploit that when we come application support. There are lots f network processors exist currently on the market and also SDN data planes are also coming to the market very often nowadays. But still we have a big problem catering SDN traffic specifically to exploit its performance while moving to pure green field SDN concept. Therefore compatibility, adoptability and specific solutions will result in SDN accelerations. Therefore SDN aware network processor which can be extended to pure SDN environment with the compatibility to more customized SDN data forwarding plane will be needed in the future.
Trending network processors have lots of customized functions and instructions for the network applications. As well as different implementations with pipelines and parallel architectures. In our research we mostly use openflow as a southbound protocol. Therefore our processor is mostly openflow aware network processor which can be extended to hybrid openflow architecture and compatible with separate data forwarding plane hardware module. In SDN environment the network processor act as a more application oriented platform to give various SDN services over SDN data plane. Most of the controlling functions are embedded into the SDN controller. With the internal intelligence of the processor, dumb SDN data plane can act as a separate module rather processor in embedded inside the data plane. Advantage is more control protocols are being pushed into SDN central control plane while some amount of SDN functionalities and protocol support survive within processor inside SDN switch. Still bottleneck of the SDN network is scalability and high throughput of the system as well as network security. Compatible SDN aware network processor can reduce the exhausting general purpose functions and more legacy network oriented functions out of processor and give responsibility to SDN control plane for that while emerging more SDN oriented network functionalities to scale up the SDN network with customized architecture. Therefore our research is basically focusing on how we can make leverages on SDN customizations with more SDN aware functionalities to support this scalability and high throughput. We see some SDN data planes has arrived to market so SDN aware network processor that can support those data forwarding with some intelligence is paramount important to the growth of SDN.
Major functionalities that we try to achieve using this processor.
- Packet Processing, Flow classification & s Line Rate (1Gbps) support of the data forwarding plane
- OPENFLOW Secure Channel Establishment
- OPENFLOW Protocol Support with
- Openflow Buffer Management
- SDN Data Plane Programming Control
- SDN Data Plane Info Access
- SDN application & services support
Because of the SDN architecture we can reduce the exhaustive and processing time & resources intensive some tasks such as,
- Legacy Network Control Protocols Support
- Lookup Tables and Pattern Matching
- Higher Layer Forwarding
- Access Controlling and Queue Management
- Traffic Shaping and Control
Our ISA is based on the above mentioned network requirement which reduce some exhaustive network functions and improve some SDN functionalities to accelerate the SDN data forwarding plane. OpenFlow aware processor should contain SDN/OPENFLOW support instructions. Even though we design 32 bit processor sometimes we need to go to act like a conventional 8 bit processor because when we comes to network environment we have various fields consist of different number of lengths. In SDN environment those are important because lots of classifications, comparisons, modifications of various fields with different lengths are taken place. Therefore our RISC instruction set contains more specific instructions for network functions as well as SDN functions that can work with our data plane.
By few years almost all the big companies will move into SDN solutions and highly visualized application environment. Therefore there will lots of opportunities in the future for SDN and we can have more perfomances and better security than these legacy solutions. Networks will have better management and monitoring capabilities than now. So moving to SDN aware processor and network infrastructure development is extremely a novel area that will be going to change the world.
Written by
Mahesh Dananjaya