Comparing OpenFlow and NETCONF when interconnecting data centers

Abstract

SDN technology has been applied to a range of different networks, ranging from Ethernet services to large cloud environments. More recently, interest has turned towards extending programmability of Optical Transport Networks (OTN). In the SDN architecture, SBIs are used to communicate between the SDN controller and the switches or routers in the network. In this paper, we deploy OpenFlow and NETCONF as SBIs in managing BoD across interconnected data centers over OTN. More specifically, we use these protocols to communicate between an OpenDayLight controller and two BTI7800 network elements that interconnect the data centers. We present experimental results for both BTI's YANG-based NETCONF implementation and our port of OpenFlow for a number of use cases. Our results show that NETCONF is faster and requires fewer control message. However, OpenFlow offers better bandwidth utilization over the interconnecting link.