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Automation & Software Defined Networking (SDN) : Control Plane

The document discusses automation and software defined networking. It describes the three planes of a router - the control plane, data plane, and management plane. The control plane is responsible for routing information exchange and building tables. The data plane forwards traffic based on information from the control plane. The management plane is used for accessing and managing devices. Software defined networking uses a central controller to manage the entire network control plane through southbound and northbound interfaces. The southbound interface programs the network devices, while the northbound interface provides access to the controller through APIs.

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Debashish Roy
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63 views

Automation & Software Defined Networking (SDN) : Control Plane

The document discusses automation and software defined networking. It describes the three planes of a router - the control plane, data plane, and management plane. The control plane is responsible for routing information exchange and building tables. The data plane forwards traffic based on information from the control plane. The management plane is used for accessing and managing devices. Software defined networking uses a central controller to manage the entire network control plane through southbound and northbound interfaces. The southbound interface programs the network devices, while the northbound interface provides access to the controller through APIs.

Uploaded by

Debashish Roy
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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AUTOMATION & SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORKING (SDN)

Different tasks of a router are separated by different planes. There are three planes:

• control plane
• data plane
• management plane

Let’s take a look at the difference between these three planes…

Control Plane
The control plane is responsible for exchanging routing information, building the ARP
table, etc. Here are some tasks that are performed by the control plane:

• Learning MAC addresses to build a switch MAC address table.


• Running STP to create a loop-free topology.
• Building ARP tables.
• Running routing protocols like OSPF, EIGRP, and BGP and building the routing
table.

Data Plane
The data plane is responsible for forwarding traffic. It relies on the information that the
control plane supplies. Here are some tasks that the data plane takes care of:

• Encapsulate and de-encapsulate packets.


• Adding or removing headers like the 802.1Q header.
• Matching MAC addresses for forwarding.
• Matching IP destinations in the routing table.
• Change source and destination addresses when using NAT.
• Dropping traffic because of access-lists.

The tasks of the data plane have to be performed as fast as possible which is why the
forwarding of traffic is performed by specialized hardware like ASICs and TCAM tables.

Management Plane
The management plane is used for access and management of our network devices. For
example, accessing our device through telnet, SSH or the console port.
Traditional networking uses a distributed model for the control plane. Protocols like
ARP, STP, OSPF, EIGRP, BGP and other run separately on each network device. These
network devices communicate with each other but there is no central device that has an
overview or that controls the entire network.

With SDN, we use a central controller for the control plane. Depending on the
vendor’s SDN solution, this could mean that the SDN controller takes over the control
plane 100% or that it only has insight in the control plane of all network devices in the
network. The SDN controller could be a physical hardware device or a virtual machine.
Southbound Interface

The SDN controller has to communicate with our network devices in order to program
the data plane. This is done through the southbound interface. This is not a physical
interface but a software interface, often an API (Application Programming Interface).

An API is a software interface that allows an application to give access to other


applications by using pre-defined functions and data structures.
Some popular southbound interfaces are:

• OpenFlow: this is probably the most popular SBI at the moment, it’s an open
source protocol from the Open Networking Foundation. There are quite a few
network devices and SDN controllers that support OpenFlow.
• Cisco OpFlex: this is Cisco’s answer to OpenFlow. It’s also an open source protocol
which has been submitted to the IETF for standardization.
• CLI: Cisco offers APIC-EM which is an SDN solution for the current generation of
routers and switches. It uses protocols that are available on current generation
hardware like telnet, SSH, and SNMP.

Northbound Interface

The northbound interface is used to access the SDN controller itself. This allows a
network administrator to access the SDN to configure it or to retrieve information from
it. This could be done through a GUI but it also offers an API which allows other
applications access to the SDN controller. You can use this to write scripts and automate
your network administration. Here are some examples:

• List information from all network devices in your network.


• Show the status of all physical interfaces in the network.
• Add a new VLAN on all your switches.
• Show the topology of your entire network.
• Automatically configure IP addresses, routing, and access-lists when a new virtual
machine is created.

Through the API, multiple applications are able to access the SDN controller:

• A user that is using a GUI to retrieve information about the network from the SDN
controller. Behind the scenes, the GUI is using the API.
• Scripts that are written in Java or Python can use the API to retrieve information
from the SDN controller or configure the network.
• Other applications are able to access the SDN controller. Perhaps an application
that automatically configures the network once a new virtual machine is created
on a VMware ESXi server.
SDA FABRIC, UNDERLAY, AND OVERLAY

Overlay:The mechanisms to create VXLAN tunnels between SDA switches,


which are then used to transport traffic from one fabric endpoint to another
over the fabric.

Underlay : The network of devices and connections (cables and wireless) to


provide IP connectivity to all nodes in the fabric, with a goal to support the
dynamic discovery of all SDA devices and endpoints as a part of the process to
create overlay VXLAN tunnels.

Fabric: The combination of overlay and underlay, which together provide all
features to deliver data across the network with the desired features and
attributes

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