OpenFlow: Enabling Innovation in Campus Networks
March 14, 2008

Nick McKeown
Stanford University

Tom Anderson
University of Washington

Hari Balakrishnan
MIT

Guru Parulkar
Stanford University

Larry Peterson
Princeton University

Jennifer Rexford
Princeton University

Scott Shenker
University of California, Berkeley

Jonathan Turner
Washington University in St. Louis is almost no practical way to experiment with new network protocols (e.g., new routing protocols, or alternatives to IP) in sufficiently realistic settings (e.g., at scale carrying real traffic) to gain the confidence needed for their widespread deployment. The result is that most new ideas from the networking research community go untried and untested; hence the commonly held belief that the network infrastructure has “ossified”. Having recognized the problem, the networking community is hard at work developing programmable networks, such as GENI [1] a proposed nationwide research facility for experimenting with new network architectures and distributed systems. These programmable networks call for programmable switches and routers that (using virtualization) can process packets for multiple isolated experimental networks simultaneously. For example, in GENI it is envisaged that a researcher will be allocated a slice of resources across the whole network, consisting of a portion of network links, packet processing elements (e.g. routers) and end-hosts; researchers program their slices to behave as they wish. A slice could extend across the backbone, into access networks, into college campuses, industrial research labs, and include wiring closets, wireless networks, and sensor networks. Virtualized programmable networks could lower the barrier to entry for new ideas, increasing the rate of innovation in the network infrastructure. But the plans for nationwide facilities are