# Limitations of OpenFlow Topology Discovery Protocol

## TL;DR

This paper critically examines the security and efficiency limitations of the OpenFlow Discovery Protocol (OFDP) and introduces sOFTD as a more secure and efficient alternative for topology discovery.

## Contribution

The paper identifies key limitations of OFDP and proposes sOFTD, a new topology discovery protocol with enhanced security and efficiency features.

## Key findings

- OFDP has significant security vulnerabilities.
- OFDP is inefficient for large-scale networks.
- sOFTD outperforms OFDP in security and efficiency.

## Abstract

OpenFlow Discovery Protocol (OFDP) is the de-facto protocol used by OpenFlow controllers to discover the underlying topology. In this paper, we show that OFDP has some serious security, efficiency and functionality limitations that make it non suitable for production deployments. Instead, we briefly introduce sOFTD, a new discovery protocol with a built-in security characteristics and which is more efficient than traditional OFDP.