SDN-Based IP and Layer 2 Services with an Open Networking Operating System in the GÉANT Service Provider Network

Authors:
  • PVPier Luigi Ventre
    Pier Luigi Ventre
  • MGMatteo Gerola
    Matteo Gerola
  • ESElio Salvadori
    Elio Salvadori
  • MUMian Usman
    Mian Usman
  • SBSebastiano Buscaglione
    Sebastiano Buscaglione
  • LPLuca Prete
    Luca Prete
  • JHJonathan Hart
    Jonathan Hart
  • WSWilliam Snow
    William Snow
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Abstract
The migration of service providers' wide area networks toward SDN is a challenging task. In this article, we consider the critical requirements of GÉANT, the 500 Gb/s pan-European provider interconnecting 38 national research and educational networks, for a total of 50 million users. A long-term evolution path toward the softwarization of GÉANT is discussed, consisting of four steps to be realized in future years, from providing SDN-based connectivity, to the so-called software defined infrastructure (SDI). As a first step, the softwarization of some basic services currently offered by GÉANT is considered: GÉANT IP, GÉANT plus, and GÉANT Open. This article reports the concrete experience in the SDN-based design and implementation of these services, which have been called L3-SDX and L2-SDX. Both use cases have been addressed with the use of the open source Open Network Operating System (ONOS®). The L3-SDX service has been developed on top of an existing ONOS application, called SDN-IP. SDN-IP allows interconnections between SDN and legacy networks through BGP. The L2-SDX service has been realized as a new ONOS application. Both services are currently deployed on the GÉANT Testbed Service, a continental facility offering geographical virtual testbeds to the research community. The article reports the experience gained from this experimental deployment and discusses the benefits for a service provider like GÉANT.