Multi Gig Software Defined Networking (SDN) using Intel Data Plane Development Kit (Intel DPDK) with an Inline Protocol Analyzer

Abstract

In this era of high speed internet connectivity where internet traffic is increasing every day there are variety of network devices to incorporate in the network and all network devices nearly have hidden their internal functionality from the user. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a new emerging technology which make network devices open source and turn these black boxes in to white boxes which will take networks to new level of research and improvement. In Software Defined Networking, we decentralized the control plane form the data plane. We are having a single controller which is logically centralized, we call it Control Plane that manages the simple forwarding plane (planes) / Data Planes and those data planes are dumb forwarding plane that can only do one thing i.e. forward the packets entered into it (data plane) using the rules specified by the control plane. An interface which called Openflow (Southbound communication interface) is used as a communication medium between control and data plane. Execute / Run Control plane software on general purpose hardware; decisions about where traffic is sent. Programmable data planes; maintain, control and program data plane from central entity (control plane). Data Plane consists of a Flow Table, and an action associated with each flow entry. Using the table whenever a packet enters into it, they extract the headers information i.e. IP, MAC, VLAN ID etc. and match those headers with the tables entries accordingly and apply the action associated with the matched entry which is might to send the packet out from some port or to send it to another table. We choose our final year project on Software Defined Networking which is a research based project, our research work is twofold, firstly we implemented Multi-gig SDN using Intel Data Plane Development Kit (Intel DPDK) in Linux environment, which helps to configure different network devices functionality on it and enabling researchers to develop custom devices i.e. Routers, switches, firewalls etc. We are providing a platform for researchers and students that they can implement their own ideas on real time traffic and can observe their results. There are many ways to implement SDN. It can be mapped on ASIC, NPU products i.e. products having network processing units (i.e. FPGA’s) or it can be totally software based i.e. implemented it on general purpose Commercial Off The Shelf COTS PC’s while using their architecture efficiently i.e. memory, cores etc. We have chosen COTS option and likewise it has its own cons and pros. We have used Intel Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK), an open source software (OSS) based platform (kit) using which you can efficiently handles memory, I/O interrupt, packet processing and 10GbE (line rate). Intel DPDK actually helps you to bypass your data / packet directly from NIC to user space by 5 | P a g e using its own packet processing libraries hence minimize the latency and interrupt at a line rate of 10GbE i.e. handling data at a rate of 10 gigabit per second. We have developed an application to show how research and development can be made on SDN platform. Our first Application on the SDN platform is “Protocol analyzer” that analyze the protocols of packets passing through the network in real time. As current network devices are black boxes, SDN provides us with the solution by enabling researchers to perform their experiments alongside real traffic. Based on our framework, we have designed a software based platform that enables the researchers to customize and experiment on their network. Now it is a real challenge for the researchers that how they benefit from this platform and come up with new and exciting technology.