Introduction to Software-defined Networking (Winter 2015/2016)

Details

Note: Please register for the course. In order to register, please subscribe to the mailing list "Sdn_course_16@gwdg.de" by subscribing at the following site (and write a message of the SDN course(s) that you plan to attend): https://listserv.gwdg.de/mailman/listinfo/sdn_course_16

Note: Seats for this class have now been limited. All students that have registered for the course until January 4th 2016 will be able to participate. All other students, please take a look here for open seats. If there are no further seats available, you can still subscribe to the mailing list. In that case, you will be placed on a waiting list.

Note: Please bring a laptop to class. In case that you do not have one, please notify Sameer or David well ahead of the course. Please have Python 2.7 installed and running on your machine.

Workload/ECTS Credits:	150h, 5 ECTS
Module:	AI: M.Inf.1130: Software-defined Networks (SDN); ITIS: 3.31
Lecturer:	Dr. David Koll
Teaching assistant:	Sameer Kulkarni, MSc
Time:	14th to 18th March 2016
Place:	TBA
UniVZ	[1]

Course Overview

Software-defined networking (SDN) has recently attracted both researchers in academia and big players in communication technologies, and is currently probably the 'hottest' topic in computer networking. In this course, we will discuss the basics of SDN.

The course is organized as a block course as follows: Initially, two lectures introducing the main motivation, concepts and state-of-the-art of SDN will be given. Afterwards, we will have a short peak into the most recent research from both industry and academia, which is going to define the future of SDN. In this session, students will select one paper of interest that they will present towards the end of the course. The course then continues with an introduction to Mininet [2], and students are expected to perform some basic experiments on creating and using a virtual network based on Mininet. After the experimentations, students will present the paper they selected earlier.

For all parts of the course, exercises will be provided, in which students must obtain at least 50% of the total points to be admitted to the examination of this course. The exam is taken by submitting a report of 10-15 pages summarizing the lessons learned during the lectures and exercises as well as the research papers investigated (a LaTeX template will be provided). Depending on the number of attendees, several parts will be conducted in teams of students.

The course Advanced Software-defined Networking (M. Inf.1230) will follow a similar structure to provide a more profound knowledge of SDN.

Schedule (tentative)

Type	Date	Morning Session I	Morning Session II	Afternoon Session I	Afternoon Session II
	Time	9:15 - 10:45	11:00 - 12:30	14:00 - 15:30	15:30 -
Theory	14.03.2016	Lecture I: Introduction to SDN	Exercise I	Lecture II: OpenFlow and its Applications	Exercise II and Quiz I
Theory	15.03.2016	Lecture III: Network Virtualization via SDN	Exercise III	Lecture IV: SDN Controllers	Exercise IV & Quiz II
Theory / Practical	16.03.2016	Lecture V: Research in SDN	Exercise V	Tutorial I: Python: Recap	Exercise VI and Quiz III
Practical	17.03.2016	Tutorial II: Mininet: Basics	Exercise VII	Tutorial III: Mininet: OpenFlow & Network Topologies	Exercise VIII and Quiz IV
Practical	18.03.2016	Tutorial IV: Mininet: SDN Controllers	Exercise IX	Tutorial V: Mininet: Network Virtualization	Exercise X and Quiz V
Seminar	March 2016	Final Presentations	Final Presentations

Requirements

• Please make sure that you fulfill the below requirements:
  • Basic knowledge in computer networking (e.g., successfull completion of the course "Computer Networks") and object oriented programming is required.
  • Knowledge of the Python programming language. Students can pursue some online learning courses to get to know Python syntax (see, for instance, here). There will only be a short recap on Python during the class.
  • Basic UNIX/Linux knowledge. For instance, you need to know what a man page is, how to install packages in Linux, and how to use a terminal.

Grading

• Each participant is required to actively attend the course and earn 50% of the points of the exercises.
• There will be a short quiz at the end of each day of the course.
• Students will be required to do a short presentation after the end of the course (Date to be announced, ~March 2016).
• Grading will be based on a written report to be submitted by each student, which includes:
  • Slides used for presentation in the seminar (25%)
  • A review of a SDN research paper (25%)
  • Two graded quizzes (25%)
  • Two graded exercises (25%)
• No exam

Reading List

If you are interested in reading into some material before the course starts, NEC maintains a somewhat up-to-date reading list.

Paper Readings (tentative)

• Group 1: SDN Basic Concepts
  • TBA
  • TBA
• Group 2: SDN Infrastructures - WAN:
  • Achieving High Utilization with Software-Driven WAN, Chi-Yao Hong, Srikanth Kandula, Ratul Mahajan, Ming Zhang, Vijay Gill, Mohan Nanduri, Roger Wattenhofer, Sigcomm 2013
  • B4: Experience with a Globally-Deployed Software Defined WAN, Sushant Jain et al., Sigcomm 2013
• Group 3: SDN Infrastructures
  • TBA
  • TBA
• Group 4: Data Plane
  • TBA
  • TBA
• Group 5: Data Plane
  • TBA
  • TBA
• Group 6: Network Updates
  • zUpdate: Updating Data Center Networks with Zero Loss, Hongqiang Harry Liu, Xin Wu, Ming Zhang, Lihua Yuan, Roger Wattenhofer, David A. Maltz, Sigcomm 2013
  • Dynamic Scheduling of Network Updates, Xin Jin, Hongqiang Harry Liu, Rohan Gandhi, Srikanth Kandula, Ratul Mahajan, Ming Zhang, Jennifer Rexford, Roger Wattenhofer, Sigcomm 2014
• Group 7: Distributed Control Plane
  • ONOS: Towards An Open Distributed SDN OS, Pankaj Berde, Matteo Gerola, Jonathan Hart, Yuta Higuchi, Masayoshi Kobayashi, Toshio Koide, Bob Lantz, Brian O'Connor, Pavlin Radoslavov, William Snow, Guru Parulukar, HotSDN 2014
  • Onix: A Distributed Control Platform for Large-scale Production Networks, Teemu Koponen et al, OSDI 2010
• Group 8: Control Plane vs Data Plane
  • No Silver Bullet: Extending SDN to the Data Plane, Anirudh Sivaraman, Keith Weinstein, Suvinay Subramanian, Hari Balakrishnan, HotNets 2013
  • Reclaiming the Brain: Useful OpenFlow Functions in the Data Plane, Liron Schiff, Michael Borokhovich, Stefan Schmid, HotNets 2014
  • Application-aware Data Plane Processing in SDN, Hesham Mekky, Fang Hao, Sarit Mukherjee, Zhi-Li Zhang, T.V. Lakshman, HotSDN 2014
• Group 9: Hybrid Networks
  • Panopticon: Reaping the Benefits of Partial SDN Deployment in Enterprise Networks, Dan Levin, Marco Canini, Stefan Schmid, Fabian Schaffert, Anja Feldmann, USENIX ATC 2014
  • HybNET: Network Manager for A Hybrid Network Infrastructure, Hui Lu, Nipun Arora, Hui Zhang, Cristian Lumezanu, Junghwan Rhee, Guofei Jiang, Middleware (industrial track) 2013
• Group 10: OpenFlow
  • A NICE Way to Test OpenFlow Applications, Marco Canini, Daniele Venzano, Peter Perešini, Dejan Kostić, Jennifer Rexford, NSDI 2012
  • A SOFT Way for OpenFlow Interoperability Testing, Maciej Kuźniar, Peter Perešíni, Marco Canini, Daniele Venzano, Dejan Kostić, CoNEXT 2012
• Group 11: Network Policies and Virtualization
  • Can the Production Network Be the Testbed?, Rob Sherwood, Glen Gibb, Kok-Kiong Yap, Guido Appenzeller, Martìn Casado, Nick McKeown, Guru Parulkar, OSDI 2010
  • CoVisor: A Compositional Hypervisor for Software-Defined Networks, Xin Jin, Jennifer Gossels, Jennifer Rexford, David Walker, NSDI 2015
• Group 12: Policy Verification:
  • Header Space Analysis: Static Checking for Networks, Peyman Kazemian, George Varghese, Nick McKeown, NSDI 2012
  • Real Time Network Policy Checking using Header Space Analysis, Peyman Kazemian, Michael Chang, Hongyi Zeng, George Varghese, Nick McKeown, Scott Whyte, NSDI 2013
• Group 13: SDN Security
  • FRESCO: Modular Composable Security Services for Software-Defined Networks, Seungwon Shin, Phil Porras, Vinod Yagneswaran, Martin Fong, Guofei Gu, Mabry Tyson, NDSS 2013
  • SPHINX: Detecting security attacks in software-defined networks. Dhawan, Mohan, et al., NDSS 2015
• Group 14: SDN-based Measurement
  • FlowSense: Monitoring Network Utilization with Zero Measurement Cost, Curtis Yu, Cristian Lumezanu, Vishal Singh, Yueping Zhang, Guofei Jiang, Harsha V. Madhyastha, PAM 2013
  • Software-defined Latency Monitoring in Data Center Networks, Curtis Yu, Cristian Lumezanu, Abhishek Sharma, Qiang Xu, Guofei Jiang, Harsha V. Madhyastha, PAM 2015