A Datapath-Centric Virtualization Mechanism for OpenFlow Networks

Abstract

The adoption of a robust and scalable network virtualization framework is a key requirement in order to make the vision of a shareable network infrastructure a reality. To this aim, one of the most suitable approaches is the one which takes advantage of the emerging paradigm of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and OpenFlow, its de-facto standard. Several virtualization frameworks have been proposed in the last few years, however, they are either based on proxy-based solutions that raises scalability and robustness issues (FlowVisor), or they rely on a simplified view of the data path (generally based on Open vSwitch instances) that have little chances to be adopted in production network settings. This paper presents a novel OpenFlow-based network virtualization mechanism exploiting a recent open-source data path project named extensible Data path Daemon (xDPd), the proposed multi-platform data path is based on a robust distributed virtualization architecture that is able to run on multi-version OpenFlow switch network scenarios, has a minimal overhead from a performance point of view and can be easily ported on several hardware platforms via xDPd libraries.