A demonstration of automatic bootstrapping of resilient OpenFlow networks

OpenFlow has disruptive potential in designing a flexible network that fosters innovation, reduces complexity, and delivers the right economics. The core idea of OpenFlow is to decouple the control plane functionality from switches, and to embed it into one or more servers called controllers. One of the challenges of OpenFlow is to deploy a network where control and data traffic are transmitted on the same channel. Implementing such a network is complex, since switches have to search and establish a path to the controller (bootstrapping) through the other switches in the network. We implemented this automatic bootstrapping of switches by using an algorithm where the controller establishes a path through the neighbor switches that are connected to it by the OpenFlow protocol. In the demonstration, we show this by using a GUI (Graphical User Interface) placed at the controller. Additionally, in the GUI, the OpenFlow switch topology gathered during bootstrapping is shown. During the demonstration, we insert a failure condition in one of the links in the topology and show failure recovery by a change in the GUI.