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OpenFlow Network Research Collaboration

Network Services and Telecommunications (NST), has been collaborating with Dr. KC Wang, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer and Engineering at Clemson, on network research involving a new protocol called OpenFlow.

OpenFlow provides an open programming interface (API) to network hardware, making network devices into simple interface-containing packet forwarders. Intelligence is moved to controllers that speak the OpenFlow API. This enables rapid development of new network protocols and configurations, since the API is open to any to use. Since specialized forwarding hardware is used, traffic can be moved at line rate. Additionally, OpenFlow changes the network from a system of independent, closed hardware platforms to a unified network with centralized control. Complex routing protocols are potentially no longer needed to exchange routing information between independent devices.

So, why should we care? Some believe that OpenFlow represents a paradigm shift in networking, analogous to the shift in computing from mainframes to PCs. Maybe this is true, maybe not, or maybe it's somewhere in the middle. In any case, such work brings us into remarkable interactions with our academic colleagues: faculty, staff, and students both at Clemson and at other sister institutions. Such interaction is what defines CCIT as an academic IT support entity. It highlights how what we do is inexorably intertwined with Clemson's academic mission. Such synergy with the University is especially important in times like this when we are asked to ensure that our work is aligned with Clemson's primary academic missions.

Last week, Dr. Wang, his students Aaron Rosen and Glenn Evans; and Dan Schmiedt, Executive Director - NST, and Jim Pepin, CTO, represented Clemson at the 8th GENI Engineering Conference in San Diego, CA. GENI is the Global Environment for Network Innovations and is a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded initiative to build a global computing environment available to researchers worldwide. The network layer of GENI is OpenFlow, and Clemson is one of 7 collaborators with Stanford on an initial OpenFlow deployment. Here, we demonstrated our current OpenFlow implementation as well as our collaboration with Georgia Tech on a specialized OpenFlow project. Clemson stands out in that we are one of few that has academic (faculty and student) as well as central IT participation.