About one of the SDN controller

Introduction

Open Daylight was introduced as a part of the effort of the Linux Foundation to create an open-sourced SDN platform to satisfy the current requirements of modern networking. It was inaugurated in 2013 and since then grew to be one of the most employed SDN controllers in different sectors: providers of communication services, cloud applications and corporate environments.

 

Architecture of Open Daylight

 

At the core, OpenDaylight is designed around a Model Driven Service Abstraction Layer (MD-SAL). This abstraction layer helps in interaction between the SDN applications and the network devices underneath regardless of who the device is manufactured by. In this way the MD-SAL architecture allows the northbound and southbound communications to be designed to operate independently under the SDN environment hence achieving scalability and flexibility.

 

Dealing with a southbound interface

This comprises of a system that performs communication with the network devices. It is known that Open Daylight can be used by southbound protocols that include OpenFlow, NETCONF, BGP, PCEP among others. Among these, the most common practice, and the most effective one is OpenFlow, which governs the operations of a network ensuring that packets are passed around the network based on what is set in the protocols.

 

Contrary to the above, the Northbound interface is used by the applications that interface with the controller. The Northbound Interface of OpenDaylight employs REST APIs to interconnect with application programs. These REST APIs allows the developers to create applications that can invoke the underlying network and control it, monitor the network, impose network enforcement policies and the likes. Examples of such applications include network appliances, operation tools, or security solutions configured to the network.

 

Other features and tasks

 

On. Figure Abstraction: Open Daylight abstracts the underlying network hardware from the user and hides this complex environment under a country-like model. The better the feasibility and ease of management of this hardware & software agnostic, diverse vendor interface, application centric network containment spikes as it allows them to entrench the policies even at the network end_points.

 

References :

Gray, K., & Nadeau, T. (2017). Software Defined Networks: A Comprehensive Approach. 2nd edition, Morgan Kaufmann.

Sharma, A., Suri, P., & Gautam, R. (2021). A Comprehensive Study on Scalability and Security in OpenDaylight. Journal of Network and Systems Management, 29(3), 12-35.

Azodolmolky, S., et al. (2019). SDN Controllers: Comparative Study and Architecture Analysis. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 21(3), 3224-3245