Network Virtualization (NV) is one of the most promising technique to enable innovation in today's network. A recent approach toward NV has been proposed through FlowVisor, whose aim is to leverage on the specific features of an OpenFlow-controlled network to share the same hardware forwarding plane among multiple logical networks. However, FlowVisor lacks some features to enable a full implementation of a NV architecture: the virtual topologies that can be established are restricted to subsets of the physical topology and it has no way for two slices to share flowspace and simultaneously prevent them from interfering with each other's traffic. In this work, an innovative system called ADVisor (ADvanced FlowVisor) which enhances FlowVisor while overcoming its major constraints is presented and a set of experimental results discussed to demonstrate its capability to provide an effective support toward a Network Virtualization architecture.

In this paper we present Vertigo (Virtual Topologies Generalization in OpenFlow networks), a Software-defined networking platform designed for network virtualization. Based on the OpenFlow original network slicing system Flow Visor, the Vertigo platform aims at covering all flavors of network virtualization: in particular, it is able to expose a simple abstract node on one extreme, and to deliver a logically fully connected network at the very opposite end. In this work, we first introduce the Vertigo system architecture and its design choices, then we report on a prototypical implementation deployed over an OpenFlow-enabled test bed. Experimental results show that Vertigo can deliver flexible and reliable network virtualization services to a wide range of use cases in spite of failure and/or congestion at the underlying physical network.

The introduction of SDN in IP backbones requires the coexistence of regular IP forwarding and SDN based forwarding. The former is typically applied to best effort Internet traffic, the latter can be used for different types of advanced services (VPNs, Virtual Leased Lines, Traffic Engineering). In this paper we first introduce the architecture and the services of an "hybrid" IP/SDN networking scenario. Then we describe the design and implementation of an Open Source Hybrid IP/SDN (OSHI) node. It combines Quagga for OSPF routing and Open vSwitch for OpenFlow based switching on Linux. The availability of tools for experimental validation and performance evaluation of SDN solutions is fundamental for the evolution of SDN. We provide a set of open source tools that allow to facilitate the design of hybrid IP/SDN experimental networks, their deployment on Mininet or on distributed SDN research testbeds and their test. Finally, using the provided tools, we evaluate key performance aspects of the proposed solutions. The OSHI development and test environment is available in a VirtualBox VM image that can be downloaded.

The introduction of SDN in large-scale IP provider networks is still an open issue and different solutions have been suggested so far. In this paper, we propose a hybrid approach that allows the coexistence of traditional IP routing with SDN based forwarding within the same provider domain. The solution is called OSHI-Open Source Hybrid IP/SDN networking, as we have fully implemented it combining and extending open source software. We discuss the OSHI system architecture and the design and implementation of advanced services like pseudo wires and virtual switches. In addition, we describe a set of open source management tools for the emulation of the proposed solution using either the Mininet emulator or distributed physical testbeds. We refer to this suite of tools as Mantoo (management tools). Mantoo includes an extensible Web-based graphical topology designer, which provides different layered network “views” (e.g., from physical links to service relationships among nodes). The suite can validate an input topology, automatically deploy it over a Mininet emulator or a distributed SDN testbed and allows access to emulated nodes by opening consoles in the web GUI. Mantoo provides also tools to evaluate the performance of the deployed nodes.