Diseño e implementación de un entorno de análisis, experimentación, evaluación y desarrollo de Redes Definidas por Software (SDN)

Abstract

Software Defined Networks (SDN), allow the decoupling of the data plane regarding the control plane, facilitating both application developers and administrators the uniform and centralized control over the network elements. It is the controller who has a total vision of the network and exchanges messages with the switches indicating what the behavior of the network will be based on various criteria. The SDN represent an emerging paradigm of modern networks that cannot be ignored, which is why several universities both nationally and internationally have developed papers based on SDN, which is why it is considered important and transcendental that the University of Cuenca address research on this topic; starting from the handling of scenarios, configuration and application development SDN. This work propound the design and implementation of an environment for analysis, experimentation, evaluation and development of Software Defined Networks (SDN), this environment can be used as a starting point for the study and deployment of SDN at the University of Cuenca, turning this academic work into a forerunner paper to adress this issue within the Alma mater. The try-out environment is made up of 12 practices, each one has a different scenario, where existing applications are exemplified and evaluated and variants are developed in order to take a step forward, covering challenges and proposing solutions for modern networks. The main topics to be addressed in the development of these practices are: Traffic Engineering, Monitoring, Administration and Security, QoS, among others. These practices are not only limited to an emulation environment but are also taken to a physical implementation environment, thus the most didactic ones for learning SDN, are implemented in a test laboratory with affordable hardware (Raspberry Pi Model 3B and Rapsberry Pi Model 4) for network switches and laptops such as terminals and controllers, requiring additional USB-Ethernet adapters. Based on the work carried out, the corresponding practice guides will be prepared so that they can be used as didactic and support material for the study, research and development of Software Defined Networks at the University of Cuenca.