OPENFLOW

Technical Relevance Analysis for a MBB service provider Radhakant Das

02Oct’11

Radhakant

CONCEPT

OPENFLOW approach centralizes the intelligence in a Data transport network and makes the routing & Switching elements mere Packet forwarders

Currently all routing and switching elements are Intelligent and hence expensive.

In current situation, intelligence is duplicated in all routing& switching elements doing the same task while adding complexity as well as reduced efficiency over redundant links/alternate paths.

OPENFLOW has potential of following the History of centralizing Intelligence in Wireless Industry

• HLR in early days were collocated to each wireless MSC making it expensive and become almost impossible once the Operators reached the million barrier even at city level. Finally the Intelligence of HLR moved out from MSC to Standalone-mode followed by lot of debate on centralized vs integrated versions w.r.to economy of scale.

• 10-12 years back all the MSCs(Mobile Switching centre) use to do subscriber profiling, Mobility Management ,call control and routing. With the growth industry on number of subscribers , call attempts etc all the intelligence moved out from MSC and renamed as Media Gateway which simply does the call routing and switching

Above explanation does give the evidence that VOICE i.e. TDM industry has seen the change of trend in architecture from distributed to centralized due to economical and complexity consideration.

OPENFLOW follows the exact path on Packet domain, what has been seen in past in VOICE dominant Mobile industry

Packet Forwarder

Feature Feature

Packet Forwarder

Packet Forwarder

Packet Forwardier

Packet Forwarder

Operating System

Operating System

Operating System

Operating System

Operating System

Network OS

Feature Feature

Feature Feature

Feature Feature

Feature Feature

Feature Feature

Openflow approach of turning Data Network into Centralized Architecture

Conventional Routers $X

Conventional Routers $X

Conventional Routers $X

Conventional Routers $X

Conventional Routers $X Routers with OPENFLOW $0.7X

Routers with OPENFLOW $0.7X

Routers with OPENFLOW $0.7X

Routers with OPENFLOW $0.7X

Routers with OPENFLOW $0.7X

Centralized Controller $3X

Rule

Action

Statistics

!Animations. Watch in slide View

OpenFlow allows telcos to reduce CAPEX, OPEX and to

add new differentiating features to their networks.

CAPEX Items - • Given that Routers and Switches expected to be far simpler and use, less processing ,the cost is expected to be reduced by ~30%. Where as the central server will be and additional cost eqv to 3times of typical cost of highest capacity switch in an incumbent network. • CAPEX on Load Balancers can be eliminated.

OPEX Benefits - The bandwidth utilisation will be more efficient than incumbent multipath network. The upper and lower peaks across redundant paths will be normailsed upto 30%. Operational Skillset levels required across multivendor scenario will be reduced significantly. Differentiating Features - Next slide---------------------

Differentiating Features in OPENFLOW

• Simplicity of Single API for Path provisioning , Policy creation etc especially on multivendor scenario.

• High Scalability - In regular scenario, Economics of architecture is largely influenced by size of the network. Where as in OPENFLOW the designer doesnot need to bother about the size of deployment. Investment is protected as same architecture is applicable along with all benefits for both small and large size networks.

• High Distribution Efficiency – In multipath and redundancy scenario the traffic is largely unevenly distributed between Source and Destination. Openflow normalises the traffic distribution in multipath scenario hence resources/ assets are optimally utilised which can be financially termed as RoA (Return of Assets)

• Decreased Latency -Since number of elements (Majorly Load balancer, Firewall , hops) across path is reduced the latency will decrease accordingly.

• Higher Security – The local nodes no more can be configured in isolation to take decision on their own

• Efficient and better service assurance than legacy MPLS where each Switch/Routing element puts its intelligence to derive a QOS.

Differentiating Features………contd.

• Significant reduction in lead time of implementing innovative routing and switching protocols.

• In an ALL-IP mobile network, traffic from Base stations can dynamically select the most suitable routes based on backhaul utilization .

• WIFI, WIMAX hand off trial has already been carried out in University lab .The handoff was based on location information within mobile networks, received signal power level, communication resource utilization and mobile backhaul congestion.

o Using OPENFLOW protocol, OPEN/Public WIFI can be accessed with external authentication such as FACEBOOK Connect, GOOGLE OPENID.

• Firewall functionality can be addressed through the OPENFLOW

• It seriously compliments the efficiency of running cloud services and Data Centre making FACEBOOK,YAHOO and GOOGLE seriously participating ONF forums

Open flow Relevance to Mobile Broadband business –

It will help smooth distribution of Data traffic across Platform redundancy , backbone multipath and lead to optimal usage of these . Currently the MBB providers are trying to achieve this through expensive load balancers and complication on building the intelligence on each node.

Caution: The technology is currently on test beds and on its way to large scale commercial deployments

Concerns of deployment

Being a new technology, deployment of OPEN FLOW concept in commercial network is yet to establish commercially the benefits of cost savings, routing and operational efficiency.

Cisco being major Data network element provider is not pursuing the commercial deployment of OPENFLOW technology even though actively participating on in the ONF forum. Press statement of Cisco’s Data Center Solutions says,

“ Cisco is committed to the ideals outlined by the ONF, but the company is still waiting to see how OpenFlow will develop before committing to actually deploying it. In fact, although Cisco would subscribe to the value of having software-defined networks, it's hard to see why Cisco would be in any particular hurry to level off the networking playing field.”

Current Research and Trials

USA- • Academia • Stanford University, CA • University of Washington, WA • Rutgers University, NJ • Princeton University, NJ • Clemson University, SC • Georgia Tech, GA • University of Wisconsin at Madison, WI • Indiana University • ICSI Berkeley, CA • University of Massachusetts at Lowell • Clarkston University • Columbia University (course offered) • University of Kentucky • UC San Diego • UC Davis • iCAIR/Northwestern • Rice University

• Purdue University • Northern Arizona University • Current Trials and Deployments • USA-Industry • Internet2 • Cisco • Juniper • HP • Ciena • Deutsche Telekom R&D Lab • Marvell • Broadcom • Google • Unnamed Data Center Company • Toroki

Current Research and Trials

Brazil • University of Campinas • Federal University of Rio de Janeiro • Federal University of Amazonas • Foundation Center of R&D in Telecomm. • Canada • University of Toronto Germany • T-Labs Berlin • Leibniz Universität Hannover • France • ENS Lyon/INRIA India • VNIT • Mahindra Satyam Italy • Politecnico di Torino United Kingdom • University College London • Lancaster University • University of Essex

Taiwan • National Center for High-Performance Computing • Chunghwa Telecom Co • Current Trials and Deployments Japan • NEC • JGN Plus • NICT • University of Tokyo • Tokyo Institute of Technology • Kyushu Institute of Technology • NTT Network Innovation Laboratories • KDDI R&D Laboratories • Unnamed University South Korea • KOREN • Seoul National University • Gwangju Institute of Science & Tech • Pohang University of Science & Tech • Korea Institute of Science & Tech

User Interest

• Genesis the hosting solution provider recently deployed OPENFLOW solution based on NEC Control servers . – Used case- Policies based on its hosting customers. These

policies can be easily added to or removed from the entire switching fabric so provisioning and de-provisioning of network resources for customers can be achieved through a single API call.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/081611-openflow-genesis-249785.html • Facebook, Yahoo , Google are very much active in

seeing the success of OPENFLOW protocol. Refernce-ONF

Proposed Steps to embrace OpenFlow in MBB service provider scenario

• All In-process and future RFPs should Mention OPENFLOW architecture.

• New load balancer deployments should be evaluated from OPENFLOW perspective.

• Evaluate roadmaps of currently deployed router and switching elements and shortlist them on putting OPENFLOW layer.

• Calculate the capacity gain in the shortlisted elements and estimate if connecting them to a Control server will balance the savings over a period of time.

• New immediate deployments should have a forward compatibility towards OPENFLOW

• Once some elements become OPENFLOW capable cluster them and let them interwork with non-OpenFlow cluster

http://video.necam.com/pflow/ : Simple

animated video explaining why to embrace OPENFLOW

End of presentation