Overview of openflow – Brocade Multi-Service IronWare Software Defined Networking (SDN) Configuration Guide (Supporting R05.6.00) User Manual

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Multi-Service IronWare SDN Configuration Guide

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Overview of OpenFlow

An OpenFlow-enabled router supports an OpenFlow Client (control plane software), which
communicates with an OpenFlow Controller using the OpenFlow protocol. The OpenFlow Controller
runs on a server or a server cluster. OpenFlow-enabled routers support the abstraction of a flow
table, which is manipulated by the OpenFlow Controller. The flow table contains flow entries. Each
flow entry represents a flow (e.g. packets with a given MAC address, VLAN tag, IP address, or
TCP/UDP port etc). The flow table is sorted by flow priority, which is defined by the controller.
Highest priority flows are at the top of the flow table.

Incoming packets on an OpenFlow-enabled port are matched (in order of priority) against the flow
entries defined for that port by the OpenFlow Controller. If the packet matches a given flow entry,
the flow matching process stops, and the set of actions defined for that flow entry are performed.
Packets that don’t match any flow entry are dropped by default. The Brocade implementation
supports an option to send such packets to the controller. Refer to

“Configuring the default action”

FIGURE 1

OpenFlow-enabled router

Simulteneous
Layer2 and
Layer3 support
for OpenFlow

Yes

Match both
source and
destination
MAC addresses

Yes

Support for
passive mode
on the device

Yes

OpenFlow
actions

Yes

Maximum flow
statistics

4096

2048

CLI command
to delete a
single flow or all
flows in the flow
table

Yes

TABLE 2

Supported Brocade OpenFlow features

Features
supported

Brocade
NetIron XMR
Series

Brocade
MLX Series

Brocade
NetIron CES
2000 Series
BASE
package

Brocade
NetIron CES
2000 Series
ME_PREM
package

Brocade
NetIron CES
2000 Series
L3_PREM
package

Brocade
NetIron CER
2000 Series
Base
package

Brocade
NetIron CER
2000 Series
Advanced
Services
package