1. Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com Software Defined Networking Lab Using Mininet and the Floodlight Controller Last Update 2014.02.02 1.0.0 1

2. Objectives See what an OpenFlow GUI based controller looks like and how it works Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 2

3. Sources This lab uses the completely setup and functional Mininet and Floodlight virtual machine from Project Floodlght at http://www.projectfloodlight.org Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 3

4. Flow of the Lab In this lab you will –Simulate a single switch, multi-host network with Mininet –Add flow rules to a flow table from a GUI based controller Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 4

5. Anti Linux Rant Before we get to this lab which does work - not without some wasted time and considerable research, but successfully nevertheless – let me vent a bit You see I spent hours trying to create this lab using the OpenDaylight controller What a waste of time Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 5

6. Anti Linux Rant Despite going through numerous sample labs that alleged that the OpenDaylight controller would run, l never got the whole thing to work properly The problem in each case was the idiot Linux command line Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 6

7. Anti Linux Rant I reiterate my view that I have held from 1995 when I started using the Slackware distribution of Linux to this week’s experience with the Ubuntu distribution, which is that Linux sucks And I mean it sucks big time In short I hate Linux Have none of the idiots who develop in the Linux environment ever used Windows Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 7

8. Anti Linux Rant A Windows install, even an Alpha or Beta version, is so simple Download an exe file, run it, you are done Besides the excessive number of steps required to install and setup OpenDaylight, it runs in Java, which creates a whole new set of problems Java has been a security risk and pain in the rear since it was invented Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 8

9. Anti Linux Rant Even worse are all of the steps that must be done from the Linux command line in subterrain directories In the sample OpenDaylight labs among other things I am expected to change directory using a string that is 97 characters long 97 characters Notice that they cannot spell either Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 9

10. Anti Linux Rant Here are the directory instructions –The source code of the OpenDaylight Controller is in a directory called opendaylight –In this directory (the coresponding directory in the git repository is usually the distribution/opendaylight/target/distribution.openda ylight-0.1.0-SNAPSHOTosgipackage/opendaylight Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 10

11. Anti Linux Rant Even if you successfully get there without a typo, the prompt is so long that you only have two characters of room to enter anything before it scrolls off to the next line Of course you then have to edit hidden files in hidden places to make Java work The suggestion was to edit these, assuming you can find them, using the vi editor Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 11

12. Anti Linux Rant vi ?? Why don’t we just go back to living in caves Why would anyone think the command line is a suitable environment in the 21 st century Imbeciles Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 12

13. Lab Setup Enough ranting I feel so much better now On to the lab setup Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 13

14. Lab Setup About the time I was going to abandon this effort I decided to try the Floodlight controller I was amazed that it worked But it did So let’s see how to set it up so we can use a controller instead of the command line to enter instructions into the flow table Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 14

15. Flow of the Lab The steps required to do this are –Download the virtual machine –Setup the virtual machine –Check the setup in Linux –Create the network –Enter flow table entries from the controller Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 15

16. Acquire Floodlight VM The first step is to acquire the Floodlight virtual machine Unlike the convoluted setup procedure required for OpenDaylight the Floodlight folks have created a virtual machine with the Floodlight controller already installed and ready to go Smart folks The virtual machine is found here Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 16

17. Acquire Floodlight VM –http://www.projectfloodlight.org/floodlight/http://www.projectfloodlight.org/floodlight/ Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 17

18. Acquire Floodlight VM Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 18

19. Acquire Floodlight VM Click on the Download link in the menu bar Scroll down On the right side click on –Download Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 19

20. Acquire Floodlight VM Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 20

21. Acquire Floodlight VM Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 21

22. Acquire Floodlight VM Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 22

23. Acquire Floodlight VM Unzip the file Remember where you put it Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 23

24. Setup the Virtual Machine This is a VMware virtual machine It will also run in VirtualBox Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 24

25. Setup the Virtual Machine Once the files are unzipped they must be loaded into VMware Start VMware Player Click on –Open a Virtual Machine Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 25

26. Setup the Virtual Machine Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 26

27. Setup the Virtual Machine Navigate to where the vmx file is stored Click –Open The virtual machine will appear in the virtual machine list in the left panel Click on –Play the virtual machine toward the bottom of the right panel Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 27

28. Setup the Virtual Machine Don’t’ bother with the VMware tools for Linux Once it is ready the screen should look like this Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 28

29. Setup the Virtual Machine Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 29

30. Setup the Virtual Machine Even though this is a VMware created virtual machine it can be opened in VirtualBox To do this download the appliance shown below this lab’s link Extract the files from the zip file just downloaded Start VirtualBox Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 30

31. Setup the Virtual Machine Under the File menu select –Import Appliance Navigate to where the zip file was expanded Select the ovf file Click –Next Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 31

32. Setup the Virtual Machine Once the appliance is imported select it in the left pane Click –Settings Select –Network Change the adapter to –Host-only Adapter Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 32

33. Setup the Virtual Machine Click –OK Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 33

34. Setup the Virtual Machine Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 34

35. The Virtual Machine Start the virtual machine as you would any virtual machine Login using –floodlight As the username There is no password Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 35

36. The Virtual Machine Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 36

37. Record the IP Address Run ifconfig Write down the IP address of this virtual machine Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 37

38. Record the IP Address Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 38

39. Create the Network To start Floodlight at the command line enter –sudo mn This will create a network with –Controller using Floodlight –Switch named s1 –Host named h2 –Host named h3 Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 39

40. Create the Network Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 40

41. What is Mininet For this lab on SDN we will be using Mininet to create the SDN hardware and OpenFlow commands to define how the hardware acts Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 41

42. What is Mininet Mininet is a network emulator, not a simulator It can be used to create virtual hosts, hubs, switches, controllers, and links The code used in Mininet can be used with no or minimal changes on real SDN OpenFlow networks Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 42

43. Connect to the Controller To connect to the controller go to the host operating system Start a web browser Google Chrome works best for this as Internet Explorer is missing some add in as it only shows part of the page Likely something to do with Java again Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 43

44. Connect to the Controller Enter this –http://192.168.13.131:8080//ui/index.htmlhttp://192.168.13.131:8080//ui/index.html Where 192.168.13.131 is the IP address shown when ifconfig was run above This screen will appear Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 44

45. Connect to the Controller Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 45

46. Examine the Controller Let’s look around Click on –Topology This shows the network layout created by the sudo mn command Here we have one OpenFlow switch and two generic hosts Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 46

47. Examine the Controller Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 47

48. Examine the Controller Click on –Switches Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 48

49. Examine the Controller Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 49

50. Examine the Controller Click on the number in blue just below DPID This will appear It shows us the active ports and the flows being managed by the controller and sent to the switch Notice that there are none as no traffic has crossed the network as the Flows shows 0 Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 50

51. Examine the Controller Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 51

52. Examine the Controller Let’s cause the switch to ask the controller for instructions so that a set of flow rules will appear in the flow table This will be reactive mode since the switch will ask the controller what to do The controller will respond with a set of flow rules for the flow table Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 52

53. Examine the Controller To cause this go to the mininet prompt and enter –h2 ping h3 Return to the virtual machine running the browser Notice the two flow entries now shown Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 53

54. Examine the Controller Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 54

55. Summary We now have a fully functioning Software Defined Network being controlled by an OpenFlow controller Copyright 2014 Kenneth M. Chipps Ph.D. www.chipps.com 55