Software-Defined Networking for Datacenters

Abstract

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a new networking design approach which is spreading fast. This approach is based on the separation of data and control planes, which offer the network operator certain advantages in terms of centralized programmatic control. This centralized approach of management and control maintains a global view of the network rather than managing tens of thousands of lines of configuration scattered among thousands of network devices. Software-defined networks aim to provide high flexibility to modify network state and behavior.

This thesis aims to explore the new emerging paradigm Software-Defined Networking and test its implementation and demonstrate how to implement SDN concepts within a datacenter network taking Sudan University of Science and Technology datacenter network as a case study.The project also implements load balancing with the help of software. The new SDN approach reduces the cost, offers flexibility in configuration, reduces time to deploy, provides automation and facilitates building a network without requiring the knowledge of any vendor-specific software/hardware.

Theproject uses Mininet emulation environment, and POX as a controller to control this environment. The emulation components are integrated together to construct the system. The output of this project is an SDN datacenter based network controlled by the POX controller.