SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORKING

GUEST EDITORIAL

SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORKING

Richard Yang

A

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　　　 Jun Bi

　 Guofei Gu

major recent development in computer networking

implemented a proof-of-concept prototype as an Ether-

is the emergence of Software Defined Networking

net device driver for a commodity FPGA network card

(SDN), whose goal is to provide a centralized, program-

on Linux. In addition to an interesting idea, it is a good

mable control plane that is decoupled from the distrib-

system work, which is desirable and valuable for SDN in

uted data planes on individual network devices. In par-

this development phase.

ticular, the development of OpenFlow has demonstrated

The second article, “A Novel Floodless Service Dis-

many potential benefits of SDN, and multiple vendors

covery Mechanism Designed for Software-Defined Net-

have started to offer commercial switches supporting the

working”, by JIAN Wang, et al., proposes a new flood-

OpenFlow standard. Researchers have also made prog-

less service discovery mechanism (FSDM) for SDN. In

ress on SDN components including SDN controllers,

particular, this paper focuses on analyzing the character-

switches, programming interfaces, verification and de-

istics of the most widely used broadcast messages such

bugging tools, and SDN applications in data center net-

as DHCP and ARP messages, and proposes the design of

works and campus networks. Despite the progress, many

DHCP relay and ARP proxy to handle these messages.

important issues regarding SDN remain. The goal of this

FSDM can eliminate flooding and reserve the auto-con-

Special Topic Issue is to explore research and develop-

figuration characteristics without changing existing

ments related to SDN to further its state of art.

hardware, software and protocols. Simulation results in

In particular, this Special Topic Issue contains a col-

the paper demonstrate that their solution can significantly

lection of papers that will provide both theoretical ad-

reduce network traffic in the data/control plane, and de-

vances and practical experiences for SDN, covering top-

crease overhead in the control plane.

ics ranging from data plan, controllers, and applications.

The third article, by WANG Zhimin, et. al., is titled

We received 33 manuscripts in response to our call for

“Survivable Virtual Network Mapping using Optimal

papers, and we have accepted 6 papers for this Special

Backup Topology in Virtualized SDN”, and studies the

Issue.

issue of how to embed virtual networks considering net-

The first article, “A Packet I/O Architecture for Shell

work failures. Managing virtual networks can be a major

Script-based Packet Processing”, is authored by KUGA

use case of SDN, and hence efficient algorithms in this

Yohei, et al., and provides an extension to their original

domain are important. In particular, in the context of a

paper presented at the 2ndACM SIGCOMM Workshop on

single-link failure, the authors propose the usage of an

Hot Topics in Software Defined Networking. The objec-

optimal backup topology to reduce the amount of back-

tive of EtherPIPE is to provide SDN users an ability to

up resources, and simulations demonstrate that they can

process packets like using UNIX commands to process

reduce backup resources by over 18%, compared with

files. EtherPIPE is such a network I/O device and authors

existing algorithms.

China Communications • February 2014

Biographies

The fourth article, by HU Yannan, et. al., is also on reliability, but from a different perspective. In particu-

Y. Richard Yang, received his B.E. degree in Computer Science

lar, as the title of the paper, “On Reliability-optimized

and Technology from Tsinghua University (1993), and his M.S.

Controller Placement for Software-Defined Networks,” indicates clearly, it is on the reliability of SDN controller placement. The authors pose the following question: “given a physical network and the failure probability of each network component, how many controllers are needed and how to place them such that a pre-defined objective is optimized?” The paper introduces a new metric called expected percentage of control path loss to measure SDN controller reliability, formulates what they call the RCP problem, analyzes the computational complexity, and then develops two heuristics to produce controller placement. The fifth article, “On Generality of the Data Plane and Scalability of the Control Plane in Software-Defined Networking”, by ZUO Qingyun, et. al., studies another important perspective of SDN: scalability. In particular, the paper analyzes the handling of packet-in and flow statistics messages of OpenFlow, The paper also provides analysis on some interesting multi-layer SDN controller architecture to provide more insight on the scalability of SDN networks. The last article, “SDN based Next Generation Mobile Network with Service Slicing and Trials”, is authored by XU Xiaodong, et al., and proposes to implement SDN into a Frameless Network Architecture (FNA) for the 5th Generation (5G) mobile network evolution, which is important considering the current and future fast-increasing requirements of mobile Internet services. To achieve the goal, the authors design Mobile-oriented OpenFlow Protocol (MOFP), discuss service slicing in mobile networks, and provide preliminary performance evaluation results using Mininet. The editors thank all of the authors for their submissions to this Special Issue. We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their timely responses and their valuable comments to improve the quality of the articles. We hope that this Special Issue will further stimulate research interests in the significant research area of Software Defined Networking

China Communications • February 2014

and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin (1998 and 2001). Currently, he is a Professor of Computer Science at Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. His current research interests include computer networks, mobile computing, wireless networking, sensor networks, and network security. He leads the Laboratory of Networked Systems (LANS) at Yale. He has served as a committee member of many conferences, as a panelist of several funding agencies, as an advisor of several industrial and academic organizations, and is the conference co-chairs of multiple conferences and workshops. Jun Bi, received his BS, CS, and Ph.D. degrees in Dept. of Computer Science and Technology at Tsinghua University. Currently, he is a full professor and director of Network Architecture & IPv6 Research Division, Institute for Network Sciences and Cyberspace at Tsinghua University. His current research interests include Internet Architecture and Protocols, Future Internet, Internet Routing, and IPv6.He published more than 100 research papers and 20 Internet RFCs or drafts (4 of them were approved), owned twenty innovation patents, received national science and technology advancement prizes, and is supported by program of Ministry of Education of China for New Century Excellent Talents. He is the leading expert (PI) of a major Future Network project supported by China “863” High-tech program: Future Network architecture and INnovation Environment (FINE). He is co-chair of AsiaFI (Asia Future Internet Forum) Steering Group, and co-founder of China SDN Commission, where he serves as Standing Vice Chair. He is an ONF (Open Networking Foundation) Research Associate. He served as Co-Chairs of a number of workshops at INFOCOM, ICNP, Mobihoc, etc., and TPC members at ICNP, SIGCOMM-HotSDN, SIGCOMM-ICN, CoNEXT, ICDCS, IWQoS, etc. Guifei Gu, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at Texas A&M University (TAMU). Before coming to Texas A&M, he received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interests are in network and system security, such as Internet malware analysis/detection/ defense, software-defined networking (SDN) security, web and social network security, mobile and Android security, and intrusion/anomaly detection. Dr. Gu is a recipient of 2010 NSF CAREER Award, 2013 AFOSR Young Investigator Award, 2010 IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy (S&P’10) Best Student Paper Award, and a Google Faculty Research Award. Dr. Gu is an active member of the security research community and he has served on the program committees of top-tier security venues, such as the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), and the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), among many others. He is currently directing the SUCCESS (Secure Communication and Computer Systems) Lab at TAMU.

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