IEEE NFV-SDN Workshop Tutorials

Two parallel sessions:

Track 1 - NFV & SDN Operational Challenges and Opportunities

T1.1 ONF ATRIUM as an NFV & SDN Distribution

Speakers: Saurav Das
Open Networking Foundation
Time slot: 9:00am to 10:15am (75 minutes)

The Open Networking Foundation was formed in 2011 to promote adoption of open Software Defined Networking. As the industry continues to be transformed by SDN and Network Functions Virtualization, open source software has emerged as a vital element to validate use cases and implementations. With the added challenge of inherently diverse hardware platforms, network operators are compelled to address the increasingly complex task of integration of their applications, controllers, and data planes, often with a distinct stack for each use case.

ONF's Project Atrium is an open SDN Distribution -  a vertically integrated set of open source components which together form a complete SDN stack. Atrium aims to simplify and accelerate SDN adoption by making it easy to build applications in a multi-vendor environment. Of particular emphasis is the development of complete SDN solutions based on scalable OpenFlow 1.3 hardware (open and vendor-proprietary). To that end, the first release of Atrium (June 30th) built SDN-based, BGP speaking routers from seven different vendor OpenFlow switches.

This tutorial will cover the first release of Atrium, discuss what is coming in the next release, as well as other use-cases that are in the roadmap. The tutorial will also include  a hands-on component to get familiar with the Atrium distribution. Tutorial attendees are encouraged to bring a laptop with the Atrium distribution downloaded and ready to go.

The distribution can be downloaded from here: https://community.opensourcesdn.org/wg/Atrium/wiki/2015A-rc

There is no ONF membership requirement for using or participating in Atrium. However, at present, you do need to register at the site above, to login and download the distribution and documentation (it's free). Once the VM is downloaded, ensure that you can start the VM, by following the installation guide here:
https://community.opensourcesdn.org/wg/Atrium/wiki/installation-guide

Finally, join the community mailing list: https://community.opensourcesdn.org/wg/OSSDN/mailingList/subscriptions

T1.2 Secure Software Defined Networking for the Smart Grid Communication Infrastructure

Speakers: A. Selcuk Uluagac & Kemal Akkaya
Florida International University, FL, USA
Time slot: 10:30am to 13:00 (2.5 hours)

The existing energy infrastructure in the US is going through a massive transformation to make it smarter (i.e., Smart Grid), which will be more reliable, connected, and strongly networked with the ability to transfer data and power in both upstream and downstream directions (demand and load). Hence, today’s smart grid deploys myriads of networking equipment and domain specific devices such as IEDs, PLCs, and PMUs.
Given the population growth projected for cities, demand for smarter services and cities, and the integration of micro-grids (i.e., community grids) into the macro-grid, this massive infrastructure needs to have security and resiliency features as follows: 1) Self-healing and resilient energy infrastructure; 2) Automated and scalable software updates, and 3) Device-vendor‑agnostic operations.
One sustainable solution to achieve these features is via the use of the emerging Software Defined Networking (SDN) technology, which can facilitate the scalable management of a Smart-Grid networking infrastructure. SDN-enabled Smart-Grid infrastructure can provide an excellent opportunity for reducing the network management cost by integrating a software‑based control that can be flexible with respect to software upgrades, flow‑control, security patching, and quality of service (QoS). Since one of the major goals in SDN is to enable interaction with the devices and thus create an open architecture, one can get a global view of the entire Smart Grid infrastructure and would be able to make global or local changes without having to manually access each device via its unique hardware.

Part 1: Background on Smart Grid AMI Infrastructure Generation, Transmission and Distribution Layers Network Infrastructure for Connecting Substations SCADA Systems.

Part 2: SDN-Enabled Network Architecture Network Model among Substations Network Model within Substations SDN Controller Implementation SDN Use Case Scenarios for Resiliency.

Part 3: SDN Security in Smart Grid Threats to SDN in Smart Grid Desired Security Mechanisms.

T1.3 Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) and Software Defined Networks (SDN) changing the paradigm of how networking functions

Speakers:
Giuseppe Antonio Carella,  Fraunhofer FOKUS & Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
Lorenzo Tomasini, Fraunhofer FOKUS & Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
Time slot: 14:00 to 17:00 (3 hours)

With the evolution towards 5G, the mobile communication ecosystem is foreseen to adopt a new approach aiming at better subscriber service as well as to attract other markets such as industry (Industry 4.0) and cloud manufacturing, automotive, safety and security, and massive M2M deployments.
With novel paradigms such as everything as a software, software defined radio, edge networking, stateless core networks, cognitive network management, big data in telco, Network Functions Virtualization, Software Defined Networks and Service Function Chaining, a very high level of customization can be achieved.
In order to be able to provide a coherent evolution towards 5G, the different stakeholders form the different network domains (radio, core network, backhaul, management, applications, virtualization and devices) have to achieve a common understanding across the complete ecosystem. This will provide the means to achieve meaningful R&D results which can be mapped directly to the 5G software and equipment.
This half a day workshop will provide a comprehensive mirror of the current status of the NFV ecosystem mainly focusing on the Management and Orchestration (MANO) domain in the scope of the 5G evolution. Particular attention will be given to the influences of NFV and SDN on the evolution of the core network components.
During the tutorial will be outlined the open technology ecosystem currently available in the context of SDN and NFV. Particular attention will be given to the new open source toolkit (OpenBaton) recently launched by Fraunhofer FOKUS and TU Berlin. A general overview of this project will be given, and it will be shown how can be possible to create a virtualised Network Service in few steps.

Section 1: Software Defined Network and Network Function Virtualization

Section 2: SInfluences of SDN and NFV on the 5G Technology Advancements Directions

Section 3: The open ecosystem for prototyping 5G Network Functions

Section 4: Introducing OpenBaton a ETSI NFV compliant Orchestrator

Questions & Closing remarks

Track 2 – GENI NFV & SDN Research Infrastructure

T2.1 Building and testing SDN and NFV applications in a real network

Speakers: 
Niky Riga, BBN Technologies
Ryan Izard, Clemson University
Vic Thomas, BBN Technologies
Time slot: 9am until 17:00

In recent years there has been a lot of interest by both academia and industry in applying SDN and NFV concepts to a big variety of interesting problems.
Although there has been an explosion of new ideas, the process of building, testing and evaluating new SDN/NFV applications in a realistic environment that goes beyond a single VM is still a struggle. GENI, a nation-wide distributed testbed, allows users to bring up topologies that include OpenFlow software and hardware switches and test their applications on a real network. Users have the ability to evaluate their ideas on a diverse set of embedded topologies and gain new insights on SDN.

In this tutorial, we will go over the OpenFlow API and discuss about NFV fundamentals. In the hands-on portion you will get to implement both simple and
more complicated controllers and test them in real networks using software (OVS) or hardware switches within GENI. 

This tutorial consists of three parts: 

Part 1: An Introduction to OpenFlow, the OpenFlow 1.0 API and an overview of the GENI testbed. 

In this part we will introduce OpenFlow and guide you through the writing of simple OpenFlow controllers.

In more detail:

• We will go over OpenFlow fundamentals and discuss NFV applications
• We will do a brief overview of the GENI testbed
• You will create their own topology within the GENI network
• You will write simple OpenFlow 1.0 controllers in Python
• Experiment with NFV concepts in your topology

Part 2: Build a fault tolerant application using OpenFlow 1.3.

In this part we are going to go over the OpenFlow 1.3 spec and discuss the main enhancements from previous versions. You will get to experiment with some of the features through the hands-on exercise. 

In more detail:

• We will go over OpenFlow 1.3 attributes
• See a live demonstration of an OpenFlow 1.3 Live Video streaming service that is operational and discuss the benefits of using OpenFlow 1.3
• You will write a controller using the FloodLight framework that implements a failure resilient controller based on the fast failover feature of OpenFlow 1.3

Part 3:  Debugging techniques for OpenFlow applications.

In this third part we are going to discuss the difficulties of deploying an OpenFlow application on a real network. The challenges of debugging and present best practices and commonly used techniques that will help an OpenFlow developer to understand the performance of their application.

Pre-requisites

Familiarity with the basics of the Unix command line, ssh, computer programming and networking.

Hands-os prerequisites

Laptop requirements: Laptop running relatively recent versions of Mac OS, Linux or Windows (MacOS or Linux preferred). Laptops must have at least 4GB of memory, a modern processor (at least dual core and faster than 1.5 GHz) and a WiFi interface. We do not recommend that you bring a tablet or netbook.
GENI account: Please follow these instructions to sign up for a GENI account: http://groups.geni.net/geni/wiki/SignMeUp. If you need to create a GENI-only account please mention "IEEE SDN/NFV tutorial" in your application. Approval of GENI accounts takes a couple of business days so please start early!
Software requirements: Please follow these instructions from the laptop that you will have with you at the tutorial:http://groups.geni.net/geni/wiki/GENIExperimenter/Tutorials/ToolSetupIEEESDNNFV