Design Of A Remote Management System For OpenFlow-enabled Switches

Compared to the current network architecture based on TCP/IP stack, the Open Flow-based Software-Defined Networking(SDN) promises flexibility, scalability and manageability to meet the requirement of innovation applications.SDN has been providing a great number of opportunities, as well asmany challenges one of which is the remote network management of emerging type of switch.This thesis analyzes the technology specification of OpenFlow switch and focuses on the key issues and implementation technology of network management in comparing with the conventional approaches.Firstly, the thesis presents a discussion of OF-Config protocol and YANG data modeling language, followed by an analysis of remote management functions mapping to Open vSwitch(OVS) operations.We have proposed a prototype design of system for managing the switch remotely. The design includes the adaption of management function to OVS entities, extensions based on YANG models, information container of status of switch, type of port of logical switch, and RPC operations of QoS of port.Secondly, this thesis utilizes the open source software Yuma, in which there is a yangdump program to compile YANG models, including verification of syntax and semantics and generation of the Server Instrumentation Libarary(SIL) files. The thesis also describes the development of SIL by invoking OVSDB functions in order to reconfigures OpenFlow-enabled switches and retrieve their working states.Finally, a software virtaul network over XenServer has been built for funationlity testing. Test cases have been designed for verifications of the developed prototype.The verifications cover the establishment of NETCONF session, assignment of controller, and portconfiguration of Open Flow switch.