Scalable High Performance SDN Switch Architecture on FPGA for Core Networks

Abstract

Due to the increasing heterogeneity in network user requirements, dynamically varying day to day network traffic patterns and delay in network service deployment, there is a huge demand for scalability and flexibility in modern networking infrastructure, which in return has paved way for the introduction of Software Defined Networking (SDN) in core networks. In this paper, we present an FPGA-based switch which is fully compliant with OpenFlow; the pioneering protocol for southbound interface of SDN. The switch architecture is completely implemented on hardware. The design consists of an OpenFlow Southbound agent which can process OpenFlow packets at a rate of 10Gbps. The proposed architecture speed scales up to 400Gbps while it consumes only 60% resources on a Xilinx Virtex-7 featuring XC7VX485T FPGA.

Impact of TCAM size on power efficiency in a network of OpenFlow switches

“…One of the platforms used to implement OpenFlow switches is field programmable gate array (FPGA) [19, 20 ]. We assume that the NetFPGA [21 ] platform is used to implement the OpenFlow switch function.…”

Time-Dependent Performance of a Multi-Hop Software Defined Network

“…Figure 1 describes the basic system architecture of an SDN switch proposed in [1]. Arriving packets are temporarily queued at the input buffers and are then removed by the Arbiter and placed scheduled into the Packet Buffer.…”

“…To analyze this system, we use a continuous state space and continuous time diffusion process {X(t), t ≥ 0} to replace the discrete state-space buffer queue, where the increments dX(t) = X(t + dt) − X(t) are normally distributed, with mean βdt and variance αdt, which appear in the diffusion Equation (1).…”

“…Software defined networking (SDN) is a dynamic, adaptable, and manageable paradigm that facilitates innovations in computer networks [1], together with the prototyping and deployment of flexible routing mechanisms [2,3]. Traditional networking is based on manual configurations of distributed proprietary network devices, a cumbersome and errorprone process that can underutilize network resources [4].…”

Diffusion Model of Preemptive-Resume Priority Systems and Its Application to Performance Evaluation of SDN Switches

“…The SDN switches were modeled recently with the use of diffusion approximation in [ 47 , 48 , 57 ]. They considered the switch architecture discussed in [ 59 ] and simplified it to a single G/G/1/N station. They argued that since the input and output hardware of an SDN switch is fast, the main component of the switch introducing delay and therefore to be modeled, is the queue of packets waiting until the node identifies to which flow they belong and what output port they are to be sent.…”