Crops: uma proposta de comutador programável de código aberto para prototipação de redes

Abstract

Software Defined Network (SDN) promises a technological path to empower users with the ability to innovate in their networks. However, the diversity of network switches supporting SDN are still roadblocks for network engineers willing to develop innovative applications due to the closed and proprietary hardware implementation. This diversity leads to significant challenges in the control of SDN switches and the development of high performance SDN applications, hampering the core proposal of SDN: to enable fast innovation in real networks. The proposal of this work is to explore the limits of some commodity network hardware, such as Mikrotik RouterBoard switch, in which its proprietary firmware was replaced by the OpenWRT, a distribution based on GNU Linux, together with the Open vSwitch (OvS), a hardware-agnostic open source virtual switch, to create a new environment for experimentation in computer networking. As proof of concept, the prototype was implemented in low cost commercial switches, conducting experiments in order to analyze certain features of the OpenFlow protocol ported in these equipment, such as maximum number of entries in the flow table, the data plane performance using different sizes of network packets, comparing their results with the original implementation provided by the manufacturer and the influence of switch CPU utilization in the result. This combination of open platforms represent a natural step in the development, deployment, and evaluation of SDN applications.