OpenFlow Experimentation in ORBIT

SB9 is dedicated to ​OpenFlow experimentation (NOTE: Nodes in SB9 don't have wireless interfaces!). As show in Figure 1, sanbox 9 is built around an OpenFlow capable switch with 9 nodes 7 of which are equipped with NetFPGA cards and 2 general purpose ORBIT nodes and a sandbox console.
Figure 1: SB9

The switch labeled 'sw-sb-09', a Pronto 3240, provides the central connectivity backplane for as 'DATA' interface of all hosts/NetFPGAs in the sandbox. Each host (node1-1..node1-7, node1-10..node1-11) is connected to the sw-sb-09 switch through one 1GbE data connection on the interface 'eth0' or 'exp0'. As is the case with the rest of ORBIT nodes, a second GbE interface ('eth1' or 'control') of each node, that is used exclusively for experiment control (incl. ssh/telnet sessions), is connected to an external control switch outside of sandbox.

The first 7 hosts (node1-1..node1-7) each contain a 4x1GbE NetFPGA installed on a PCI slot. Each NetFPGA has 4 connections to the top switch, corresponding to its 4-GbE ports nf2c0-nf2c3.

Some external reference links about above hardware:

• ​OpenFlow
• ​Pronto 3290 | ​OpenFlow's page on Pronto 3290
• ​NetFPGA

The Pronto switch is a OpenFlow enabled switch and can be run in native or OpenFlow mode by controlling its boot configuration. When in native mode, it runs the Pica8 Xorplus switch software while when it is in OpenFlow mode it can run either stock Indigo firmware or experimenter provided OpenFlow image for Pronto switches. The mode of operation is controlled by a simple HTTP based service.

Tutorials

The usual: reserve sb9, login into the console, image the nodes that you and run the tutorials:

• Tutorial 1: OpenFlow "Hello World"
• Tutorial 2: Multiple Controllers
• Tutorial 3: NetFPGA Testing