Software Defined Exchanges: New Opportunities for Future Internet Research

1. Software Defined Exchanges:New Opportunities for Future Internet Research Mike Zink GREE-SC2014 July 21st 2014, Iowa State University

2. Overview • Motivation • What is an SDX? • SDN Domains • Prototypes • Opportunities • Cyber-physical System • Adaptive Streaming • Instrumentation and Measurement • Routing • Education • Conclusions

3. Emerging SDN Capabilities are VirtuallyCertain to Require Multi-Domain Infrastructure • OpenFlow and software defined networking play an important role in GENI • GENI is deploying a multi-domain SDN federation at ~50 campuses nationwide • Key technology for enabling GENI’s deep programmability capability • Because GENI is built as a federation, there’s a clear need for SDN infrastructure to span multiple operating domains • GENI infrastructure is owned and operated by the host institutions • Experiments and services need to exert control across these borders in a consistent and controlled way • These needs are repeated at a larger scale when GENI federates with other peer infrastructure, nationally and internationally

4. Multi-Domain SDN GENI Projects Prototype GENI Multi-Services Network Exchange (GMNE) ShakedownExperimentations and Prototype Services on Scalable, Agile, Robust, and Secure Multi-Domain Software Defined Networks A Software Defined Exchange for Engaging Commercial Partners in a Self-sustaining GENI

5. What is an SDX? It’s OF on steroids It’s software everything It’s an adv. IXP It’s for adv. BGP It’s multi- domain SDN It’s only for research

6. What do I believe it is! • First and foremost: Connecting several independent SDN domains • But only networking? • Chip Elliot: “If we would built the Internet from scratch today it would have routers with lots of storage and computation added” • SDX: Interconnect of SDN domains, storage & computation

7. Taking the next stepCreate SDX’s to bridge “SDN islands” Today: “SDN islands” GENI slices & VLAN stitching help point the way SDN SDN SDN SDN SDN SDN SDN SDI SDN SDX SDN SDN Next Step: Add SDX’s Build a “Rev 0” control plane, run native next-gen apps and scientific instruments spanning multi-domain SDNs SDN SDN SDX SDN SDN

8. SDX’s build the human community • Working together . . . • US Industry • Network operators • Next-gen app developers • Scientific Instrument developers and users • Researchers • Basic concept • “SDN Exchange” • Open meeting point • Support end-to-end applications across multiple SDN domains • Key benefit: Very OPEN • Good way to rapidly build / grow tech community • Good way to create & share open-source tool chains • Good way to try out different approaches, perhaps vendor specific, in early days • Later, we can move to private peering points

9. SDN Domains • What is an SDN domain? • Example: Internet Advanced Layer 2 Service (AL2S) • Google’s B4 • In this talk I will focus on the research network/academic side of SDN Domains.

10. SDX Prototypes • Exchange points that connect several SDN domains • StarLight, SOX, MAX, iMinds in Europe, … • Most of them also include computation and storage • StarLight and SOX SDXes open for researchers • GENI racks at both locations!

11. StarLight SDX 1650 StarLight E1200 Switch StarLight Ciena Switch ORNL 1709 1651 1750 ESnet AL2S StarLight OF switch SL GENI AM 1650,1651 1709 1750 NU Rack 4 1 StarLight Openflow Switch StarLight QXF3500 Switch 1709 1750 52 1750 2 1750 50 SDX Other GENI Racks SLRack 1750 1655 60 StarLight Network Diagram for SDX

12. Where can we go? • Lot’s of things we cannot do (or at least only in complicated ways) in today’s Internet • NDN • Cyber-physical systems • Clean slate • In-network computation and storage • …

13. GENI: Infrastructure for Experimentation GENI is a large multi-domain SDN testbed

14. GENI: Infrastructure for Experimentation GENI is the largest multi-domain SDN testbed

15. Setting up an SDX Experiment Study the benefits of SDX on NowCast, a time-critical short-term weather forecast application Deploy it on a GENI slice

16. Conceptual diagram Simulated Radar Traffic SDN Middlebox SDN SDN SDX SDX GEC floor (SDN)

17. GENI Slice StarLight OF switch middlebox (processing host) SoX-IG Rack NU-IG Rack AL2S Switch SoX OF switch AL2S Switch sdx GT-IG Rack sdx end hosts (radar traffic) end hosts (view results) demo floor Resource reservation with standard GENI tools

18. SDN Control Learning Controller Load Balancer Controller StarLight OF switch SoX-IG Rack NU-IG Rack AL2S Switch SoX OF switch AL2S Switch sdx GT-IG Rack sdx Experiment choice how to manage SDN resources

19. Nowcast – Processing Nowcast VM Dynamically provisioned SDN Grid & Merge DARTS Post-process Webserver New nowcast every one minute!

20. Nowcast – Experiment Monitoring with GIMI tools Simulated Radar Traffic SDN Middlebox SDN SDN SDX SDX OF Controller GEC floor (SDN)

21. Nowcast – Data Flow Simulated Radar Traffic Monitoring with GIMI tools SDN Middlebox SDN SDN SDX SDX GEC floor (SDN)

22. Example: Adaptive Streaming Features: • Quality of the video “adapts” to the client’s bandwidth requirements • Fewer video freezes • Highly likely that client receives better quality as video progresses SOLUTION : SDX Steps: • Video is chunked (broken into segments of equal length) • Each chunk is represented in different quality segments - encoded in 5 different bitrates • Bitrate (quality) of content streamed to client is chosen based on bandwidth between server and client. • Client decides the quality which is to be played • Every chunk requested is a new HTTP connection Requirements: • High/consistent bandwidth connection • Compute-intensive Operation - Live transcoding • Content availability

23. Instrumentation and Measurement • Perform repeatable experiment • Automate experiment • Archive data • Share experiments • Outfit SDXes with measurement infrastructure and tools that can be used by research community • Important for initial research stages • Analysis, verification, validation • More on the basics in tomorrow’s tutorial

24. Some wild ideas • Can you use measurement data for OF controller behavior • Send measurement data on different flow than production traffic • Isolation • Measurement data collection will not interfere with production traffic

25. Separating Measurement & Production • Inherent in GENI but imposes limitations

26. Routing • In between GENI Racks we can implement, test, and evaluate our own routing protocols • Inter-domain routing not possible • SDXes will allow research in new inter-domain routing protocols. • E.g. work on BGP: • SDX: A Software Defined Internet Exchange. Arpit Gupta, Laurent Vanbever, Muhammad Shahbaz, Sean P. Donovan, Brandon Schlinker, Nick Feamster, Jennifer Rexford, Scott Shenker, Russ Clark, Ethan Katz-Bassett

27. Routing 2.0 • OpenFlow: Flow rules based not only on IP but also type-of-service, port, VLAN priority and so on • BGP policy • Even BGP traffic could be treated differently • Routing without IP • Routing to avoid DDoS attacks • Routing based on available storage and compute resources

28. Education • Use SDX in the classroom and computer networks/distributed systems labs • E.g., students can study inter-domain routing in real testbed (not sure if this is possible anywhere else?)

29. Conclusions • SDX: They are here (to stay?) • New vehicle for “at-scale”, next-generation Internet research • Examples for SDX use • Meaningful experimentation • How could you use them for your routing ideas?

30. Further Reading • NRTDI SDX Workshop: http://www.nitrd.gov/nitrdgroups/images/3/3d/SDN_Workshop_for_OnVector_Monga_v2.pdf • NSF SDX Workshop: http://groups.geni.net/geni/wiki/SDXandSDIWorkshop • Paper on Google B4:http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~vahdat/papers/b4-sigcomm13.pdf

31. Acknowledgements • Niky Riga • Mark Berman • Chip Elliott • DivyashriBhat • Joe Mambretti • Russ Clark

32. StarLight SDX