ONOS Traffic Forwarding & Rerouting Application

Project Description

This project focuses on enhancing network performance by optimizing traffic forwarding based on network performance metrics such as link utilization. The application utilizes the network performance metrics to load balance the traffic to an optimal route when there's network congestion on the current path.

sFlow and Prometheus are used to collect and store the network performance metrics

The SDN controller application is designed within the ONOS framework. As of now, the application is at version 2.7.0 and is in Long-Term Support (LTS) status.

Experiments were conducted using Containernet, a fork of the well-known Mininet network emulator that enables the utilization of Docker containers as hosts within emulated network topologies. These experiments utilized Open vSwitch with OpenFlow version 1.3 for Southbound communication.

The primary topology examined in this project is the campus LAN architecture, which includes the core layer, distribution layer, and access layer. But, this application supports other topologies as well.

Usage

Step 1: Configure sFlow-RT

Configure the polling & sampling rate to 10 & 10 in sflow.py script

Step 2: Configure Prometheus

Refer to this guide here, to define a metrics "scraping" job in the Prometheus configuration file, prometheus.yml

Step 3: Bring up Mininet/Containernet and connect to ONOS

You may define your own topology according to your own needs. Connect the switches to your ONOS controller.
Refer to my other GitHub repository here, to create a CLOS topology using Containernet.

Step 4: Compile & install the application

Refer to the general guide here, clone this repository, compile it with mvn clean install -DskipTests then install the .oar to ONOS. Activate the app on ONOS with the command app activate org.foo.appin ONOS CLI

Step 5: Install supporting ONOS application

Activate the default OpenFlow app to enable Southbound communication from ONOS to OvS. Use the command app activate org.onosproject.openflow in ONOS CLI

Step 6: Enable/Disable Campus LAN Path Filtering

Default is TRUE
If you intend to disable this feature, use the command onos:cfg set org.foo.app.Foo campus false in ONOS CLI

Step 7: Mark Core/Distribution switches (Optional if Step 5 feature is disabled)

By default, all switches are marked as access switches
Required Arguments:

1 - core 
2 - distribution 
3 - access 

To mark, use the command mark [switch-device-id] [1/2/3] in ONOS CLI
Example mark of:0000000000000001/2 2

Step 8: Set link bandwidth for the Core/Distribution Layer

By default, all links are set to 10Mbits
Link bandwidth MUST follow the value set during Mininet network emulation.
Use the command, bandwidth [core/distribution/access] value in ONOS CLI
Example:
bandwidth core 30

Step 9: Set forwarding method

Required Arguments:

There are 4 forwarding methods: 
0 - Shortest Path forwarding and no rerouting 
1 - Shortest Path forwarding and least utilized path rerouting 
2 - Least utilized path forwarding and rerouting 
3 - Round Robin path forwarding and Least utilized path rerouting 

Use the command, onos:cfg set org.foo.app.Foo forwarding [0/1/2/3] in ONOS CLI
Example:
onos:cfg set org.foo.app.Foo forwarding 3

Step 10: Traffic Generation

Pump high-load traffic using traffic generation tools such as iperf & scapy.
Refer to my other GitHub repository here, to implement a real-life traffic generation scenario using a real-life traffic flow dataset.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache-2 License.