This tool allows an SDDN switch to artificially extend the number of physical interfaces linked to a network host.
Physical testbeds are important for research as they allow experiments to be performed under real-world conditions. It can, however, be difficult to scale physical testbeds as physical equipment is required to do so. While Virtual Machines (VMs) are a great way to add more hosts and traffic generators to a testbed, servers and physical hosts generally have a limited number of network interfaces available to them which limit the possible physical topology configurations. This tool uses an OpenFlow switch to solve this challenge. By mapping switch ports to MAC addresses, each VM or container running on a server can have a dedicated physical port associated with it.
This tool requires the following:
- Python3
The following commands can be used to install the requirements:
sudo apt-get install python3
This tool requires an SDN capable switch and the ONOS SDN controller. The tool has been tested with ONOS version 1.15.0. This tool utilizes the ONOS REST API and should therefore be compatible with any data plane technologies (OpenFlow, P4, etc.) that is supported by ONOS.
usage: ifext.py [-h] [-l LOAD_CONFIG] [-u USER] [-v] [--version]
SDN host InterFace EXTension (IFEXT) Kit. Creates and installs flow rules that allow an SDN switch to act as an extension to a single physical network interface.
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-l LOAD_CONFIG, --load-config LOAD_CONFIG
Config file with port mappings.
-u USER, --user USER Username for REST API. You will be prompted for the
password.
-v, --verbose Show additional output.
--version show program's version number and exit
The following is example contents for a configuration file to be used with this tool. It defines the port number to be used as the source port, as well as the port mappings for the individual hosts. The controller address and port number must be set here. The controller name is set here as this tool may support controllers other than ONOS in the future.
{
"controller": "onos",
"controller-url": "http://127.0.0.1:8181",
"source-port": 1,
"port-mappings": {
"aa:bb:cc:11:11:11": 2,
"aa:bb:cc:22:22:22": 3,
"aa:bb:cc:33:33:33": 4,
"aa:bb:cc:44:44:44": 5,
"aa:bb:cc:55:55:55": 6,
"aa:bb:cc:66:66:66": 7
}
}
IFEXT manages the flow rules required to disperse traffic coming from a source port across multiple different switch ports. This is done based on a port-to-MAC mapping provided by the user. This tool also manages the configuration needed to suppress topology discovery on the switch.
The physical topology above, paired with the configuration provided in the "usage" section would result in the logical topology shown below:
Planned tasks:
- Allow LLDP and BDDP to flow through switch to hosts.
- Add support for more controllers.
Dylan Smyth