L2OVX: An On-demand VPLS Service with Software-Defined Networks

Abstract

Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) is a widely used network technology which connects geographically distributed customer sites as a local area network. However, the process of provisioning a new VPLS circuit is complicated because service provider has to check device configurations one by one. Therefore, it is difficult to provide the service on demand. OpenFlow, the most notable protocol in Software Defined Networking (SDN), manage the network devices via a well-defined set of instructions and exposes the handling capability of flows to a centralized controller. By this logically centralized programmatic model, we have a consistent and convenient way to dynamically allocate an end-to-end path for a VPLS service. In this paper, we present a system L2OVX which leverages OpenVirteX, a network virtualization platform, to realize the VPLS service on-demand in SDN. This solution provides layer 2 translation to achieve virtualization process with line-rate performance, and enables the load balance function to improve the transfer bandwidth among tenants. The result of evaluation shows L2OVX is competitive with OpenVirteX according to the TCP throughput on softwarebased OpenFlow switches and moreover, supports most hardware OpenFlow-enabled switches to provide the line-rate throughput. Furthermore, for scalability, the number of flow entries for one tenant remains constant in L2OVX while grows exponentially in OpenVirteX.

Software defined VPLS architectures: Opportunities and challenges

“…ARCHITECTURE An SDN and NFV based SoftVPLS architecture is illustrated in Figure 1 [14], [15], [16]. This SoftVPLS architecture proposes three main changes to legacy VPLS networks.…”

“…The adaptation of SDN and NFV concepts offers new features such as centralized intelligence, network programmability, abstraction, common device standards and flow based traffic management which are useful to implement dynamic, flexible, secure and scalable VPLS networks [12], [13], [14], [15], [16]. On the one hand, the added features in SoftVPLS can also be used to overcome the limitations in legacy VPLS networks.…”

“…We analyzed all three types of VPLS architectures, i.e. 1) MPLS based VPLS (LDP [7]) 2) HIP based VPLS [2] and 3) SDN based VPLS [14], [15], [16]. We used a provider network consist of 100 PEs and 100 R-routers.…”

“…However, these legacy VPLS architectures are still suffering from several limitations. Table II explains the key limitations of legacy VPLS networks [3], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17]. A survey on SDN and MPLS integration is presented in [12].…”

“…Hu et. al present SDN based VPLS system which realized the VPLS service on-demand by leveraging on OpenVirteX network virtualization platform [15]. An SDN based framework to automates the Ethernet VPN deployment and management inside SDNbased DCs using OpenStack and OpenDaylight platform is presented in [17].…”