A Software defined Cloud-Gateway automation system using OpenFlow

The notion of programming the forwarding device using an open protocol is a key feature of Software-defined Networks (SDN). This improves network visibility and control thereby reducing vendor dependency. OpenFlow protocol provides a standardized approach to realize these goals of SDN. In this paper, we illustrate our progress with a Software-defined Cloud-Gateway automation system using OpenFlow. In addition, based on our deployment experience, we highlight two technical challenges when using OpenFlow. First, with the standardization being an evolving effort, we highlight some of the programming challenges and missing features within the OpenFlow protocol. Secondly, existing OpenFlow-based network stack lacks some architectural components that reduces the level of flexibility we achieve when programming the network. Most SDN controllers expose limited abstractions to build network applications thereby primarily functioning as an OpenFlow driver. This imposes an application programmer to work with several OpenFlow primitives. To address this problem, we elaborate our current work in extending the SDN stack to improve our overall network programmability experience.