Applying Operating System Principles to SDN Controller Design

TL;DR

This paper presents yanc, a novel SDN controller platform that leverages operating system principles, exposing network configuration as a file system for easier application development and management.

Contribution

It introduces yanc, a network controller platform that uses OS abstractions like file systems and namespaces to improve flexibility and ease of use in SDN environments.

Findings

Prototype built with FUSE on Linux demonstrates feasibility.

Network applications can be written in any language and run as separate processes.

Yanc effectively makes Linux function as a network operating system.

Abstract

Rather than creating yet another network controller which provides a framework in a specific (potentially new) programming language and runs as a monolithic application, in this paper we extend an existing operating system and leverage its software ecosystem in order to serve as a practical SDN controller. This paper introduces yanc, a controller platform for software-defined networks which exposes the network configuration and state as a file system, enabling user and system applications to interact through standard file I/O, and to easily take advantage of the tools available on the host operating system. In yanc, network applications are separate processes, are provided by multiple sources, and may be written in any language. Applications benefit from common and powerful technologies such as the virtual file system (VFS) layer, which we leverage to layer a distributed file system on top of, and Linux namespaces, which we use to isolate applications with different views (e.g., slices). In this paper we present the goals and design of yanc. Our initial prototype is built with the FUSE file system in user space on Linux and has been demonstrated with a simple static flow pusher application. Effectively, we are making Linux the network operating system.