As technology is moving toward cloud computing and virtualization it has led to the SDN paradigm, which separates the data plane from the control plane and places control at the application layer as opposed to the network layer. SDN provides dynamic and efficient configuration by switching control from to software. In comparison to traditional networks, it has a number of advantages, including lower costs, improved security, greater flexibility, and the prevention of vendor lock-in. As a result, SDN has become one of the essential solutions for replicating, re-policing, and re-configuring large-scale networks with periodic updates such as Data Centres. The most widely used SDN protocol/standard at the moment is OpenFlow, which includes design specifications. By integrating OpenFlow, data centers’ networking by making the network more consistent. A single controller architecture will be inefficient for such more extensive networks; thus recent Research has introduced software-defined with multiple controllers to the of High-availability and tolerance. Furthermore, there are a number of projects that offer SDN architecture, all of which need to be thoroughly analyzed based on their performance under various criteria in order to determine their efficiency. A comparison of the performance of multiple controller SDN architectures versus a single controller SDN architecture is presented in this paper. This study developed and examined the OpenDaylight SDN controller, using the Mininet as a network emulator. We perform a performance evaluation considering average throughput , Topology time, flow setup, table read time, flow deletion time considering different numbers of switch cases using Opendaylight Controller. Packet capturing and analysis under various conditions were performed in the experiment and presented as a graph. Under the high load, the cluster throughput and near to the mode. Further, we implement the Single controller connection for the switches and compare it against the normal all controller connection mode. We found that with a Single Controller connection in Cluster, the average topology discovery time, and flow setup time does improve. As a result, these experiments with SDN networks demonstrate that they can be improved under different network conditions.

OpenFlow is a widely used protocol for software defined networks (SDNs) that presents a new paradigm in which the control plane is abstracted from the forwarding plane for the network devices. This approach differs from the conventional networking architecture, where both planes reside on the same networking device. In SDN approach centralized entities called “controllers” act like network operating systems run different applications that manage and control the network via well-defined APIs. OpenFlow switch is the forwarding plane in SDN architecture that has tables of packet-handling rules. Traffics passing the switch are compared against these rules and a match – action method is applied to the traffics. Depending on the rules installed by a controller application, an OpenFlow switch can act like a router, a switch, or a middle box without much caring about what kind of vendor to use in the network. Data centers’ networking is one of the applications that showed successful integration with OpenFlow protocol by making the network more consistent to the rapidly expanding number of virtual machines. But with the growing traffic in the data centers, the need for high controllers’ performance increases. Therefore, in this thesis we presented a performance evaluation in both throughput and latency perspectives for the current well-known OpenFlow controllers: NOX, Beacon, Floodlight, Maestro, OpenMul, and OpenIRIS. Controller benchmarking tool was implemented for incremental number of switches connected to the controller under test, and the results show that the OpenMul controller has the highest throughput, while OpenIRIS controller shows the lowest latency.

This report is a specialization in Software defined networking. SDN really comes to revolutionize the industry and it’s under constant development. But is the technology ready to be launched into operation yet? The report would initially involve a number of problems that today's network technology is facing. It then follows a deeper description of what this software-based networking technology really is and how it works. Further, the technique is being tested in a lab assignment, using a program that builds a test virtual network with support for SDN, called Mininet. The final part summarizes and analyzes this information to see what it really means for today's networking technology and those who work with it.

For service providers, extending the Software Defined Network (SDN) concept from packet switching in Layers 2 and 3 to circuit switching in transport layers is a promising approach to meet high burstiness and high bandwidth requirements. A multi-layer controller that can provide automated controller-based restoration and protection, even for unprotected links in a multi-administrative domain, would be a significant improvement. It would allow service providers to ensure provision of guaranteed Service Level Agreement (SLA) maintenance, with optimal bandwidth usage, high availability and reduced errors. In this thesis, we propose a Software Defined Survivable Optical Interconnect (SDSOI) architecture for Data Centers (DC). This unique architecture will address service providers’ challenges related to bandwidth management, and optimize the time required while interconnecting numerous DCs to meet the high SLA demands. The architecture is built according to the overlay SDN concept, and categorizes the application layers into online, offline and third party applications. The offline application performs the routine DC tasks, while the online application manages various dynamic DC demands. An SDSOI driven Data Center Optical Interconnect (DCOI) can handle the extensive, high quality, on-demand access to the contents. The feasibility of SDSOI is verified and demonstrated using Open Network Operating System (ONOS) as the SDN controller, Mininet as the network emulator and Optical Transport Network (OTN) as the optical framework. Our work primarily focusses on the creation of business applications in the SDSOI model, and the northbound protocols or interfaces used by the applications to interact with the controller. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed SDSOI architecture and its business applications, we simulated ‘Day Night Scheduling’, an application that combines characteristics of offline and online applications. Its primary function is to package and schedule varying DC bandwidths to service providers and optimize bandwidth usage at different times of day, along with the survivability of the interconnects.

The advent of trends such as virtualization, cloud computing, IoT and BYOD has increased the traffic loads on modern enterprise and data-center networks. As the requirements on today’s networks increase, newer designs and solutions have sprout forth. Software-Defined Networking was developed to cater to the needs of modern networks and to improve traffic handling among other things. This study focuses on the ways SDN, specifically the OpenFlow standard, can be used to load-balance and increase the network throughput, in comparison to traditional methods such as Equal-Cost Load-Balancing. This was done by creating a test environment with the network emulator Mininet, and by creating load-balancing programs. The load-balancers were created using the OpenFlow protocol. These programs were used together with the Floodlight controller and were compared in the same environment. The results showed that the bandwidth load-balancer outperformed the Equal-Cost Load-Balancer.

I Software defined networking (SDN) separeras kontrollplanet och dataplanet. Separationenintroducerar säkerhetsrisker, vilket öppnar dörren för olika attacktyper. Denial-of-Service (DoS) är enattacktyp som används för att belasta nätverksresurser, genom att skicka en stor mängd trafik tillnätverket. Det finns många olika metoder för att utföra DoS-attacker, vilket gör det svårt att stoppaattackerna. En DoS-attacktyp som kan vara kritisk mot SDN är SYN-flood. Den här typen av attackriktar sig mot Three-way handshake-processen, som uppstår när en klient vill ansluta mot en server.Avslutas inte processen på rätt sätt kan det missbruka serverns resurser, och påverkanätverkstillgängligheten. Det finns olika säkerhetslösningar som motarbetar SYN-flood-attacker. Deflesta säkerhetslösningarna faller inom kategorierna upptäcka och hantera. Säkerhetslösningar inomkategorin förhindra är relativt få i jämförelse med kategorierna upptäcka och hantera. Syftet med vårtarbete var att jämföra tre typer av SYN-flood-attacker, och undersöka säkerhetslösningar som förhindrarattacktypernas påverkan på SDN. De varianter vi jämförde var SYN-flood, ACK-flood och SYN-ACK-flood. Säkerhetslösningarna vi implementerade i vår studie var Rate-limit, CPU-limit och enkombination av båda. Genom en noggrant utformad fallstudie lyckades vi identifiera SYN-ACK-floodsom attacktypen med störst påverkan på SDN. Kombinationen av Rate-limit och CPU-limit varsäkerhetslösningen som var effektivast på att motarbeta attacktyperna. Vårt arbete bidrar till en ökadkunskap inom SDN-säkerhet.

The aim of the graduation thesis is to evaluate the current development in the field of SDN and the possibility of programmability of SDN elements using the application programming interface. The first theoretical chapter describes the following: the basic architecture of SDN, the traffic within SDN between its individual layers, the communication protocols Southbound interface and Northbound interface. The second chapter of the thesis deals with the programmability of SDN elements with the help of API. The third theoretical chapter describes the current development in the field of SDN. The practical part of the thesis is devoted to creation of two laboratory tasks dealing with the programming of the SDN API. Laboratory tasks include BIG-IP programming from F5 Network and routers from Arista Network. Programming is done using Python via REST API for BIG-IP, or eAPI for Arista EOS. The Ansible setup tool is also used for the same purpose.

L’augmentation constante de la consommation de vidéos par des services par contournement(Over-The-Top) met à mal l’architecture actuelle d’Internet. Alors qu’une écrasante majorité de labande passante aujourd’hui est allouée à la livraison de contenus, les acteurs de l’Internet, tels queles fournisseurs de contenus, les réseaux de distribution de contenus et les fournisseurs d’accès sontobligés d’optimiser leurs réseaux pour supporter la qualité d’expérience attendue par l’utilisateurfinal. Ces réseaux couteux et spécialisés participent à l’ossification de l’Internet, rendant l’évolutionde son architecture plus difficile à moyen terme. En effet, un choix trop spécifique de dimensionnementdes liens et de la localisation des middle-boxes peut être un frein à une mise à jour ultérieureen vue du support de nouveaux cas d’utilisation. Heureusement, les technologies de virtualisationrécemment promues par les grands opérateurs Internet, les vendeurs de solutions et les organismesde standardisation, permettent une réelle programmabilité du réseau et une plus grande versatilitédans les usages de nouveaux équipements. En effet, l’agilité apportée par ces technologies permet ledéploiement de Fonctions Réseaux Virtuelles (VNF, Virtual Network Functions) pouvant s’exécutersur des serveurs de série à bas coût. Quant au Software-Defined Networking , il rend possible unegestion du réseau logiquement centralisée permettant la programmation des commutateurs.L’objectif de cette thèse est de montrer comment la distribution de contenu peut être amélioréecollaborativement à l’aide de la programmabilité de réseaux. Tout d’abord, nous proposons CDNaaS,une solution complète de réseau de livraison de contenu déployée sur une plateforme de "fonctionsréseaux en tant que service" adoptée et évaluée à large échelle dans le cadre du projet Européen FP7T-NOVA. Nous précisons les interfaces, l’architecture et les choix de conception fait pour développerla plateforme afin de fournir performance, auto-dimensionnement et réutilisabilité. Puis, nous proposonsdeux modèles de collaboration permettant aux acteurs de la livraison de contenu de travaillerensemble afin d’augmenter la qualité d’expérience pour l’utilisateur final, tout en promouvant unecompétition saine et une répartition équilibrée de la valeur ajoutée. Finalement, nous étudions lesdéfis liés à l’allocation de ressources virtuelles dans le cas d’un service vCDN, et proposons plusieursheuristiques et algorithmes permettant l’optimisation du coût du service.Cette thèse ouvre la voie à une distribution de contenu collaborative permettant aux utilisateursd’accéder à leurs contenus avec un haut standard de qualité, tout en contribuant à un développementsain de l’Internet. / The constant rise of Over-The-Top video consumption nowadays challenges the current Internetarchitecture. As an overwhelming majority of the bandwidth today is dedicated to the deliveryof video contents, Internet actors such as Content Providers, Content Delivery Network, InternetService Providers are forced to optimize their networks to support the Quality of Experience expectedby the End-Users . Such costly specialized networks participate to the so-called "ossification" of theInternet whichmakes the architecture harder to update, as the placement and dimensioning of linksand middleboxes may be hard to change in the future to support new use cases. Fortunately, thetrend of Virtualizating and Softwarizing the networks pushed by major Telco operators, vendors andstandardization bodies has given hopes that the computing and networking infrastructure can beeasily re-purposed. The agility promoted by technologies such as Network Function Virtualizationand Software Defined Networking makes it possible for middleboxes to be deployed as VirtualNetwork Functions that can run on "commercial off-the-shelf" hardware while having the networkmanaged by a logically centralized controller deploying network configurations on programmableforwarding devices.The goal of this thesis is to show how content distribution can be collaboratively improved thanksto Network Softwarization. First, we propose CDN-as-a-Service (CDNaaS), a complete solution tovirtualize a Content Delivery Network on top of a VNF-as-a-Service platform, adopted and evaluatedat large scale in the FP7 T-Nova European project. We elaborate on the interfaces, architecture anddesign choices made to implement the platform to support performance, automatic scaling andre-usability. Then, we propose two collaboration models allowing the content delivery actors to workjointly on improving End-User Quality of experience while fostering a healthy competition and a fairbalance of revenue. Finally, we study the challenges of NFV resource allocation for the vCDN serviceand propose several heuristics and algorithms to optimize the proposed solution in a cost-effectiveway. This thesis paves the way towards a collaborative content distribution allowing End-Users toaccess their content with the highest standards while contributing to a sound development of theInternet.

L’intégration logicielle avec les nouvelles architectures réseau via l’axe SDN (Software-Defined Network) apparaît comme une évolution majeure des réseaux. Bien que ce paradigme ait été principalement développé pour faciliter la configuration du réseau, sa capacité à intégrer les services doit également être prise en compte. Ainsi, le service de mobilité pour lequel des solutions ont été proposées dans des architectures classiques en définissant des protocoles normalisés devrait être repensé en termes de service SDN. Les appareils mobiles peuvent utiliser ou se déplacer dans le réseau SDN. Dans cette thèse, nous avons propose une nouvelle approche de gestion de la mobilité appelée "SDN-Mobility" et montré que SDN peut alors sans protocole de mobilité IP fournir une mobilité comme Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) qui est la solution adoptée par 3GPP, avec un gain de performance. Toutefois, PMIPv6 et SDN-Mobility présentent des pertes de paquets lors du transfert du noeud mobile (MN). Ainsi, dans cette thèse, nous avons proposé un nouveau paradigme basé sur la fonction de mise en cache pour améliorer la qualité du transfert lors du déplacement du mobile. La stratégie de mise en cache coopère avec le contrôleur SDN pour la mise en mémoire tampon automatique des données pendant le transfert. Nous avons proposé deux politiques de mise en cache qui sont comparées à travers une analyse de performance concernant la qualité du transfert pour l’utilisateur et pour l’opérateur. Cette thèse a également présenté que SDN-Mobility avec la politique de mise en cache peut être facilement appliquée pour gérer la mobilité dans des architectures de réseau hétérogènes capables d’intégrer le futur Internet basé sur les réseaux centrés sur l’information (ICN). / The software integration with new network architectures via Software-Defined Networking (SDN) axis appears to be a major evolution of networks. While this paradigm was primarily developed for easy network setup, its ability to integrate services has also to be considered. Thus, the mobility service for which solutions have been proposed in conventional architectures by defining standardized protocols should be rethought in terms of SDN service. Mobile devices might use or move in SDN network. In this thesis, we proposed a new mobility management approach which called "SDN-Mobility" and has shown that SDN can be implemented without IP mobility protocol for providing mobility like as Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) that is the solution adopted by 3GPP, with some performance gain. However, PMIPv6 and SDN-Mobility have some packets loss during Mobile Node (MN) handover. Thus, in this thesis, we proposed a new paradigm based on caching function to improve the quality of transfer during handover. Caching policy cooperates with SDN controller for automatic buffering of the data during the handover. We proposed two caching policies that are compared through a performance analysis regarding the quality of transfer for the user and for the operator. This thesis also presented that SDN-Mobility with caching policy can be applied easily for mobility management in heterogeneous network architectures able to integrate the future Internet based on the Information-Centric Networking (ICN).

Denna jämförelsestudie ämnar att undersöka marknadens leverantörer av nätverksutrustning de- finierade som Software Defined Wide Area Networks(SD-WAN). SD-WAN är en innovativ teknik som applicerar virtualisering och Software defined networking koncept i Wide Area Networks (WAN) för att skapa kostnadseffektiva nätverk. Studien har utförts på företaget Curitiba som idag arbetar med konsulttjänster inom utvalda WAN-optimering och SD-WAN-produkter. Arbetets syfte är att utvärdera SD-WAN-lösningar och specificera i vilken typ av företagsnätverk lösningen bäst appliceras. Undersökningen börjar med en utredning av dagens organisationsnätverk för att kunna utföra en jämförelse mot SD-WAN. Därefter utvärderas fem leverantörer av nätverksutrustning definierade som SD-WAN, dessa är: Cisco IWAN, CloudGenix, Riverbed Steelconnect, Talari och Viptela. Produkter från Viptela utvärderas i ett test som undersöker komplexiteten i konfiguration av produkten. Utöver SD-WAN jämförelsen undersöks dagens state of practice och vilka fördelar samt nackdelar denna har över SD-WAN. Cisco IWAN är en sammanslagning av Ciscos tidigare funktioner som tillammans bildar en komplett SD-WAN-lösning, för att uppnå detta behöver produkterna kompletteras med programvarulicenser. CloudGenix är en nystartad nätverksleverantör som erbjuder en SD-WAN-produkt som liknar många andra aktörer men utmärker sig med avancerad applikationsidentifikation. Riverbed SteelConnect är intressant för organisationer som söker en simplifierad helhetslösning med ett centraliserat gränssnitt. Talari var en av de första SDWAN-leverantörerna och fokuserar på applikationsprestanda och pålitlighet men saknar några av funktionerna som de andra aktörerna erbjuder. Viptela erbjuder en simplifierad SD-WAN-lösning med hög skalbarhet. SD-WAN som teknik har många spännande funktioner, organisationer som planerar att investera i en uppgradering av WAN-infrastruktur bör undersöka SD-WAN alternativ. / Mälardalens Högskola Examensarbete Abstract This comparative study aims to investigate the markets vendors of networking equipment defined as Software Defined Wide Area Networks (SD-WAN). SD-WAN is an innovative technology that applies virtualization and software defined networking concepts in Wide Area Networks (WAN) to create cost-effective networks. The study has been done at Curitiba, a consulting firm in selected WAN-Optimization and SD-WAN products. The purpose is to evaluate SD-WAN solutions on today’s market and specify in what type of enterprise networks a solution should be applied. The investigation starts with examining todays enterprise networks to later compare them to SD-WAN. Five network vendors SD-WAN products will then be examined, these are Cisco IWAN, CloudGenix, Riverbed SteelConnect, Talari and Viptela. Products from Viptela is further examined in a test that investigates the complexity of configuring said product. Beyond the evaluation of SDWAN vendor’s, todays state of practice will be compared to SD-WAN. Cisco IWAN is a merge of Cisco’s previous features which together forms a complete SD-WAN solution, to achieve a complete solution the products must be complemented by software licenses. CloudGenix is a new networking vendor offering a SD-WAN solution similar to many other vendors but distinguish themselves with their advanced application identification. Riverbed SteelConnect is interesting for organizations looking for a complete and simplified solution with a centralized web interface. Talari was one of the first SD-WAN vendors and focuses on application performance and reliability but lacks some of the functionality other vendors offers. Viptela provides a simplified SD-WAN solution with high scalability. SD-WAN as a solution have many exiting features, organizations who plans to upgrade their current WAN-infrastructure should examine SD-WAN options