OpenFlow Virtualization Framework with Advanced Capabilities

Abstract

Due to its simplicity, transparency and performance, Flow Visor takes it all in today's virtualization tools for OpenFlow networks. We argue that this effectiveness comes at the price of intolerance towards diverse OpenFlow versions used simultaneously and also limited switch functionality. What is more Flow Visor based management frameworks cannot run and configure the network controllers. In this paper we present an integrated OpenFlow virtualization framework, that is capable of (i) running and managing multiple instances of OpenFlow switches with different forwarding capabilities and OpenFlow versions, (ii) running and configuring full controllers or network applications designed for controlling a virtual network under the management of the proposed framework, and (iii) configuring QoS in the network. Besides introducing the architecture we share implementation and deployment details in our prototype system.