Towards a distributed SDN control Inter-platform signalling & Flow-aware Path Computation Element (PCE)

Transcription

1 Towards a distributed SDN control Inter-platform signalling & Flow-aware Path Computation Element (PCE) Nicola Ciulli Head of Research & Development, Nextworks SDN & OpenFlow World Congress Wed. Oct. 24 th 2012, Darmstadt (DE)

2 Goals and scope Application of SDN to flow processing architectures Beyond box vendors with in-silico all-in-one-box solutions (not easily interoperable) E.g., firewalls, carrier-grade NATs, DPI-driven rate limiters, traffic shapers/scrubbers, transparent proxies, transcoders, lawful intercept equipments, etc. Middleboxes embed the limitations of current protocols in the network, so it is quite hard to deploy anything new Multi-domain routing to support federation of OF (and beyond) facilities TE constraint-based path computation Addressing OF and legacy boxes, and upper layer resources (ALTO) SDN: centralized view & control operations? are we taking any steps backward? open & distributed is better necessarily centralized 2

3 USER INTERFACE NETWORK A flow-processing platform for middleboxes [Virtual] servers for network processing (platforms, e.g. VMs) Software to control and coordinate the platform (controller) Programmable OF switch to do the plumbing switch fabric control module control module Module Host A Module Host B OF protocol flow table control module Ad-hoc ctrl interface Module Host C controller OF controller (e.g. NOX + FlowVisor) + ad-hoc flow processing add-ons 3

4 The broader pic of flow-processing in CHANGE Distributed flow processing and SDN research to make the new L4+ middleboxes More open and distributed More upgradable, as new apps/functions arrive More resilient (no single point of failure) More controllable by operators/users ( vendor unlock) Cheap and scalable, possibly using commodity hardware and virtualized resources flowstream A flowstream B flow A flow B flowstream C flowstream D 4

5 Keys to make distributed flows processing happen Flow path computation (Flow-aware PCE) determine the best route for a given traffic flow in multi-domain SDN topologies and assign switching & processing resources along it Inter-platform signalling peer-style provisioning among flow processing platforms along the computed flow path Control Plane Flow Domain A Flow-PCE (parent) Flow Domain B Service UNI I-NNI Flow-PCE (child) PCE (child, standard) Transit Domain B Flow-PCE (child) CHANGE Platform CHANGE Platform Control Plane Control Plane CPE PE Data Plane ASBR Data Plane ASBR Data Plane 5

6 Flow-aware PCE essentials A Path Computation Element for TE constraint-based path computation in multi-region/multi-layer nets Based on IETF PCE architecture (IETF RFC4655) Include topologies from OF domains, [G]MPLS domains, ALTO servers Compose network services related e2e flow routes allocate/select flow identifiers in OpenFlow domains allocate/select (legacy) switching resources in transit domain same PCE code or even same instance for different domains Support hierarchical deployment (iterations of child/parent) for enhanced inter-island flow computation Child Flow-PCE for intra-domain flow computation Parent Flow-PCE for inter-domain flows Can maintain also topology info about IT end-resources (e.g. servers and VMs) and resource status Can use this augmented topology info when computing a flow path 6

7 Inter-platform signalling essentials Messages to install/maintain/remove flow states in the processing platforms Service Setup Service Deletion Service Notification [FFS] Service Delegation [FFS] Service Modification Flow Processing Route (FPR) to explicitly signal route decisions and s to be allocated at each flow processing platform PID (Platform Identifier) to uniquely identify for a flow-processing platform SID (Service Identifier) to globally and uniquely identify the flow service PROCESSING_ACTION_LIST, i.e. configurations on the OF switch, s and the rest of the network processes (e.g. Traffic attraction via BGP) CPE PID 1 PID 2 PID 3 PID (N-1) PID N PE Control Plane association CHANGE Platform Data Plane CHANGE Domain Service Setup Request Service Setup Allocation Service Setup Confirm Service Flow Flow ID Flow ID Flow ID Flow ID association CHANGE Platform PE CPE 7

8 All towards a SDN-ready architecture user space (3 rd party apps) Policy Mgmt [Parent] Path Computation User-defined Routing Algorithm User-defined Service Mgmt User-defined Network Analytics... User-defined Network Planning Northbound Interface (SDN APIs) Service Intelligence [Re-]planning & Network optimization Routing Intelligence Alarms & Performance Data-Path Mgmt Open Resource Access Tunnels Mgmt Topology Discovery Statefulness Path Computation Hierarchy Routing Algorithms E/W Interface Cooperating Cooperating SDN SMART SMART Controller(s) BROKER(s) Abstraction OF proxy SNMP proxy XXX proxy kernel (SDN Controller) drivers (network techs / CP / MP) Control Plane (GMPLS/MPLS) Southbound Interface (Multiple protocols/apis) Data Plane (OpenFlow) Mgmt Plane... 8

9 R&D prototypes Flow-PCE and inter-platform signalling under development at Nextworks Inter-platform signalling prototype to be delivered by Q Flow-PCE prototype planned for Q Prototypes to be validated in large scale facilities E.g. Large scale OF federated facility between Europe (OFELIA) and Brasil (FIBRE-BR) Nextworks R&D on distributed SDN control plane architecture is partly funded by the EC through the FP7 CHANGE and FP7 FIBRE projects 9

10 Thank you! For any further info Nicola Ciulli Head of Research & Development HQ: via Livornese, 1027, Pisa (Italy) Tel: Fax: