Research On The East-west Peering Mechanism Of Software Defined Network

Large networks are often partitioned by the network operators into severalsub-networks when deploying Software Defined Networking (SDN) networks.Additionally, a dedicated network operating system (NOS) or Controller is deployed foreach of these SDN networks. Each Controller can learn the local network view whichenables control of how data packets are forwarded within its network. Controlling theflow of data packets in an entire network requires each controller to have a globalnetwork view to determine the next forwarding hop. On the other side, the Internet ismanaged by owners of different administrative domains, which makes the centralizedcontrol of SDN does not work for inter-domain. Hence, to achieve the connectivity ofthe sub-networks in a same administrative domain or of different administrativedomains, Controllers are required to share reachability and other network information.This paper proposes a general West-East Bridge (WE-Bridge) mechanism forControllers to peer, which can be used in both of the two senarios: sub-networks of asame administrative domain or different administrative domains. The main researchcontent and contributions are as follows:1We researched the requirements of east-west peering mechanism in differentsenarios (sub-networks of a same administrative domain, different administrativedomains). We reviewed and analized the existing east-west peering mechanism in SDNnetwork.2We proposed a new architecture named WE-Bridge for SDN-SDN network topeer. This paper finished the design of WE-Bridge including architecuture, mechanism,network information distribution, service interface and others, which can be used for thepeering and communication between sub-networks of a same administrative domain ordifferent administrative domains.3We designed and implemented WE-Bridge and based on WE-Bridge we builtan international experimental network. This network is composed by four SDNnetworks from: Internet2in USA, CERNET (China Education and Research Network),CSTNET (China Science and Technology Network), and SURFNET (the nationalresearch and education network of Netherlands). We developed inter-domain finegranularity routing, end-to-end QoS (Quality of Service) routing, inter-domain source address verification, which verified the WE-Bridge’s ability to promote networkinnovations. Such work becomes the foundation for ONF (Open NetworkingFoundation) to creat the new west-east bound interfaces.4We verified the feasibility of applying WE-Bridge to sub-networks in SDNintra-domain. Based on WE-Bridge, we built a Mininet testbed, then designed,developed, and deployed an intra-domain routing application as use case.5We proposed the SDN control domain and legacy BGP routing domain peeringmechanism. According to the idea of retaining the traditional border BGP router anddiscarding the traditional border BGP router in SDN network, we designed differentsolutions. We designed and implemented the corresponding peering system. Thissystem was deployed by REANNZ (Research and Education Advanced Network NewZealand Ltd) in New Zealand, and Internet2SDN experimental network.