Mininet integrated hybrid OpenFlow testbed

Figure 1: Hybrid Programmable Forwarding Planes

Integrated hybrid OpenFlow combines OpenFlow and existing distributed routing protocols to deliver robust software defined networking (SDN) solutions. Performance optimizing hybrid OpenFlow controller describes how the sFlow and OpenFlow standards combine to deliver visibility and control to address challenges including: DDoS mitigation, ECMP load balancing, LAG load balancing, and large flow marking.

A number of vendors support sFlow and integrated hybrid OpenFlow today, examples described on this blog include: Alcatel-Lucent, Brocade, and Hewlett-Packard. However, building a physical testbed is expensive and time consuming. This article describes how to build an sFlow and hybrid OpenFlow testbed using free Mininet network emulation software. The testbed emulates ECMP leaf and spine data center fabrics and provides a platform for experimenting with analytics driven feedback control using the sFlow-RT hybrid OpenFlow controller.

First build an Ubuntu 13.04 / 13.10 virtual machine then follow instructions for installing Mininet - Option 3: Installation from Packages.

Next, install an Apache web server:

sudo apt-get install apache2

Install the sFlow-RT integrated hybrid OpenFlow controller, either on the Mininet virtual machine, or on a different system (Java 1.6+ is required to run sFlow-RT):

wget http://www.inmon.com/products/sFlow-RT/sflow-rt.tar.gz
tar -xvzf sflow-rt.tar.gz

Copy the leafandspine.py script from the sflow-rt/extras directory to the Mininet virtual machine.

The following options are available:

./leafandspine.py --help
Usage: leafandspine.py [options]

Options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --spine=SPINE         number of spine switches, default=2
  --leaf=LEAF           number of leaf switches, default=2
  --fanout=FANOUT       number of hosts per leaf switch, default=2
  --collector=COLLECTOR
                        IP address of sFlow collector, default=127.0.0.1
  --controller=CONTROLLER
                        IP address of controller, default=127.0.0.1
  --topofile=TOPOFILE   file used to write out topology, default topology.txt

Figure 2 shows a simple leaf and spine topology consisting of four hosts and four switches:

Figure 2: Simple leaf and spine topology

The following command builds the topology and specifies a remote host (10.0.0.162) running sFlow-RT as the hybrid OpenFlow controller and sFlow collector:

sudo ./leafandspine.py --collector 10.0.0.162 --controller 10.0.0.162 --topofile /var/www/topology.json

Note: All the links are configured to 10Mbit/s and the sFlow sampling rate is set to 1-in-10. These settings are equivalent to a 10Gbit/s network with a 1-in-10,000 sampling rate - see Large flow detection.

The network topology is written to  /var/www/topology.json making it accessible through HTTP. For example, the following command retrieves the topology from the Mininet VM (10.0.0.61):

curl http://10.0.0.61/topology.json
{"nodes": {"s3": {"ports": {"s3-eth4": {"ifindex": "392", "name": "s3-eth4"}, "s3-eth3": {"ifindex": "390", "name": "s3-eth3"}, "s3-eth2": {"ifindex": "402", "name": "s3-eth2"}, "s3-eth1": {"ifindex": "398", "name": "s3-eth1"}}, "tag": "edge", "name": "s3", "agent": "10.0.0.61", "dpid": "0000000000000003"}, "s2": {"ports": {"s2-eth1": {"ifindex": "403", "name": "s2-eth1"}, "s2-eth2": {"ifindex": "405", "name": "s2-eth2"}}, "name": "s2", "agent": "10.0.0.61", "dpid": "0000000000000002"}, "s1": {"ports": {"s1-eth1": {"ifindex": "399", "name": "s1-eth1"}, "s1-eth2": {"ifindex": "401", "name": "s1-eth2"}}, "name": "s1", "agent": "10.0.0.61", "dpid": "0000000000000001"}, "s4": {"ports": {"s4-eth2": {"ifindex": "404", "name": "s4-eth2"}, "s4-eth3": {"ifindex": "394", "name": "s4-eth3"}, "s4-eth1": {"ifindex": "400", "name": "s4-eth1"}, "s4-eth4": {"ifindex": "396", "name": "s4-eth4"}}, "tag": "edge", "name": "s4", "agent": "10.0.0.61", "dpid": "0000000000000004"}}, "links": {"s2-eth1": {"ifindex1": "403", "ifindex2": "402", "node1": "s2", "node2": "s3", "port2": "s3-eth2", "port1": "s2-eth1"}, "s2-eth2": {"ifindex1": "405", "ifindex2": "404", "node1": "s2", "node2": "s4", "port2": "s4-eth2", "port1": "s2-eth2"}, "s1-eth1": {"ifindex1": "399", "ifindex2": "398", "node1": "s1", "node2": "s3", "port2": "s3-eth1", "port1": "s1-eth1"}, "s1-eth2": {"ifindex1": "401", "ifindex2": "400", "node1": "s1", "node2": "s4", "port2": "s4-eth1", "port1": "s1-eth2"}}}

Don't start sFlow-RT yet, it should only be started after Mininet has finished building the topology.

Verify connectivity before starting sFlow-RT:

mininet> pingall
*** Ping: testing ping reachability
h1 -> h2 h3 h4 
h2 -> h1 h3 h4 
h3 -> h1 h2 h4 
h4 -> h1 h2 h3 
*** Results: 0% dropped (12/12 received)

This test demonstrates that the Mininet topology has been constructed with a set of default forwarding rules that provide connectivity without the need for an OpenFlow controller - emulating the behavior of  a network of integrated hybrid OpenFlow switches.

The following sFlow-RT script ecmp.js demonstrates ECMP load balancing in the emulated network:

// Define large flow as greater than 1Mbits/sec for 1 second or longer
var bytes_per_second = 1000000/8;
var duration_seconds = 1;

var top = JSON.parse(http("http://10.0.0.61/topology.json"));
setTopology(top);

setFlow('tcp',
 {keys:'ipsource,ipdestination,tcpsourceport,tcpdestinationport',
  value:'bytes', t:duration_seconds}
);

setThreshold('elephant',
 {metric:'tcp', value:bytes_per_second, byFlow:true, timeout:2}
);

setEventHandler(function(evt) {
 var rec = topologyInterfaceToLink(evt.agent,evt.dataSource);
 if(!rec || !rec.linkname) return;
 var link = topologyLink(rec.linkname);
 logInfo(link.node1 + "-" + link.node2 + " " + evt.flowKey);
},['elephant']);

Modify the sFlow-RT start.sh script to include the following arguments:

RT_OPTS="-Dopenflow.start=yes -Dopenflow.flushRules=no"
SCRIPTS="-Dscript.file=ecmp.js"

Some notes on the script:

1. The topology is retrieved by making an HTTP request to the Mininet VM (10.0.0.61)
2. The 1Mbits/s threshold for large flows was selected because it represents 10% of the bandwidth of the 10Mbits/s links in the emulated network
3. The event handler prints the link the flow traversed - identifying the link by the pair of switches it connects

Start sFlow-RT:

./start.sh

Now generate some large flows between h1 and h3 using the Mininet iperf command:

mininet> iperf h1 h3
*** Iperf: testing TCP bandwidth between h1 and h3
*** Results: ['9.58 Mbits/sec', '10.8 Mbits/sec']
mininet> iperf h1 h3
*** Iperf: testing TCP bandwidth between h1 and h3
*** Results: ['9.58 Mbits/sec', '10.8 Mbits/sec']
mininet> iperf h1 h3
*** Iperf: testing TCP bandwidth between h1 and h3
*** Results: ['9.59 Mbits/sec', '10.3 Mbits/sec']

The following results were logged by sFlow-RT:

2014-04-21T19:00:36-0700 INFO: ecmp.js started
2014-04-21T19:01:16-0700 INFO: s1-s3 10.0.0.1,10.0.1.1,49240,5001
2014-04-21T19:01:16-0700 INFO: s1-s4 10.0.0.1,10.0.1.1,49240,5001
2014-04-21T20:53:19-0700 INFO: s2-s4 10.0.0.1,10.0.1.1,49242,5001
2014-04-21T20:53:19-0700 INFO: s2-s3 10.0.0.1,10.0.1.1,49242,5001
2014-04-21T20:53:29-0700 INFO: s1-s3 10.0.0.1,10.0.1.1,49244,5001
2014-04-21T20:53:29-0700 INFO: s1-s4 10.0.0.1,10.0.1.1,49244,5001

The results demonstrate that the emulated leaf and spine network is performing equal cost multi-path (ECMP) forwarding - different flows between the same pair of hosts take different paths across the fabric (the highlighted lines correspond to the paths shown in Figure 2).

Open vSwitch in Mininet is the key to this emulation, providing sFlow and multi-path forwarding support 

The following script implements the large flow marking example described in Performance optimizing hybrid OpenFlow controller:

include('extras/leafandspine-hybrid.js');

// Define large flow as greater than 1Mbits/sec for 1 second or longer
var bytes_per_second = 1000000/8;
var duration_seconds = 1;

var idx = 0;

var top = JSON.parse(http("http://10.0.0.61/topology.json"));
setTopology(top);

setFlow('tcp',
 {keys:'ipsource,ipdestination,tcpsourceport,tcpdestinationport',
  value:'bytes', t:duration_seconds}
);

setThreshold('elephant',
 {metric:'tcp', value:bytes_per_second, byFlow:true, timeout:4}
);

setEventHandler(function(evt) {
 var agent = evt.agent;
 var ds = evt.dataSource;
 if(topologyInterfaceToLink(agent,ds)) return;

 var port = ofInterfaceToPort(agent,ds);
 if(port) {
  var dpid = port.dpid;
  var id = "mark" + idx++;
  var k = evt.flowKey.split(',');
  var rule= {
    priority:1000, idleTimeout:2,
    match:{eth_type:2048, ip_proto:6, ip_src:k[0], ip_dst:k[1],
           tcp_src:k[2], tcp_dst:k[3]},
    actions:["set_ip_dscp=32","output=normal"]
  };
  setOfRule(dpid,id,rule);
 }
},['elephant']);

setFlow('tos0',{value:'bytes',filter:'ipdscp=0',t:1});
setFlow('tos128',{value:'bytes',filter:'ipdscp=32',t:1});

Some notes on the script:

1. The topologyInterfaceToLink() function looks up link information based on agent and interface. The event handler uses this function to exclude inter-switch links, applying controls to ingress ports only.
2. The OpenFlow rule priority for rules created by controller scripts must be greater than 500 to override the default rules created by leafandspine.py
3. The tos0 and tos128 flow definitions have been added to so that the re-marking can be seen.

Restart sFlow-RT with the new script and use a web browser to view the default tos0 and the re-marked tos128 traffic.

Figure 3: Marking large flows

Use iperf to generate traffic between h1 and h3 (the traffic needs to cross more than one switch so it can be observed before and after marking). The screen capture in figure 3 demonstrates that the controller immediately detects and marks large flows.