How to go from a stack of routers, firewalls and load balancers to servers virtualizing those functions. It started decades ago, routers, firewalls, load balancers, etc were and still are computers. The computers are more specialized, have FPGAs and other specialty hardware, but they are still computers. The reason the network had to move to the current generation of … [Read more...]
State of OpenFlow 2012 Testing Notes – Days 12-14 – IWNetworks SDN 8952S
More Information on Latency and Testing the IWNetworks SDN 8952S We are happy to be able to announce the third vendor in our tests: IWNetworks. The IWNetworks SDN 8952S OpenFlow capable 10/40GbE Switch IWNetworks has provided Router Analysis with an SDN 8952S switch. The SDN 8952S is a 48 port 10GE + 4 port 40GE line-rate capable switch with OpenFlow v1.0 support. In our t … [Read more...]
State of OpenFlow 2012 – A Christmas Day Update
Latency and Time to first Packet/Byte This question has come up a few times from customers and researchers alike. How much latency do you add using an OpenFlow based networking stack. The question has a few answers and I will try to cover them here. The main answer is, the added latency normally only affects the first packet or two. In my setup I generally see between 2 … [Read more...]
State of OpenFlow 2012 Testing Notes – Days 8-9
What will OpenFlow do for Networking in 2013? We are a little over a week into the testing phase of our State of OpenFlow 2012 report. One trend we are following is the entrance of new vendors focusing on hardware and limited software, relying on Network APIs for control. On Friday we received a new OpenFlow based switch with 10G and 40G ports. We were able to confirm t … [Read more...]
State of OpenFlow 2012 – One Week Update
(note: this article was posted originally on Silicon Angle as part of our community outreach) Is OpenFlow where it needs to be for 2013? My research firm Router Analysis, Inc. has spent the last week working with both Public and Private (unreleased) products supporting OpenFlow v1.0. The goal of this exercise is to determine what vendors have delivered with regards to Ope … [Read more...]
State of Openflow 2012 Day 5/6 – Notes on HP
Are NEMs delivering on the promise of OpenFlow? Configuring the HP 6200yl to work with OpenFlow is a bit more complex than the pica8 pronto. The main reason is that the HP 6200yl does not have dedicated management ports, so you have to use standard switch ports for management. A lesson I have learned is to use higher ports such as 23/24 for the management and controller i … [Read more...]
State of OpenFlow Notes Day 4 – More RouteFlow
What is the state of OpenFlow at the end of 2012? A quick note about participants. I made an early call that Brocade would be able to participate, they have determined that they will not be able to. I want to thank all of the people at Brocade who worked hard to be involved in the project. And now onto my post. Today I am going to post some specific information r … [Read more...]
State of OpenFlow 2012 Notes – Day 3 RouteFlow
What is the State of OpenFlow at the end of 2012? Notes for Day Three, Sunday December 17th 2012. Today we did a lot of work with the Pronto 3290 switch. We used our in house tool to push flows into the Pronto until we either ran out of memory in Floodlight, or ran out of FIB space on the Pronto. We worked with RouteFlow via a live cd (Thanks Josh), made some … [Read more...]
State of OpenFlow 2012 Notes – Day One/Two
What is the State of OpenFlow at the end of 2012? This is the question we are looking to answer at Router Analysis, Inc. Feel free to follow along, we will try to post updates every few days. Day One and Two Started Day One, Friday, December 14th, 2012 working with the HP 6200yl switch. During staging on Thursday night we discovered that the HP switch is hardware locked to … [Read more...]
State of OpenFlow 2012 – Testing and Analysis
What is the state of OpenFlow as we transition into 2013? Router Analysis, Inc. will be taking the last few weeks of 2012 to put together a comprehensive report on the state of OpenFlow. Our goal is to work with as many analysts and academics to understand where OpenFlow was expected to be vs where OpenFlow is. While we will do OpenFlow testing, if anyone is expecting a b … [Read more...]