Book Image

OpenFlow Cookbook

Book Image

OpenFlow Cookbook

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (17 chapters)
16
Index

Introduction

The OpenFlow group table and meter table are two of the main components in the OpenFlow switch. They are used in conjunction with the flow table entry for performing some special operations. The OpenFlow meters are used to implement simple QoS operations such as rate-limiting to complex QoS frameworks such as differentiated services (DiffServ).

Group table

The group table is used to perform special operations such as multicast forwarding, multipath forwarding, switch port abstraction, fast failover support, and so on. The group table provides the following abstraction:

  • Abstraction for multicast forwarding and multipath/ECMP (Equal Cost Multi Path) forwarding
  • Abstraction to represent set of ports as a single entity for forwarding packets
  • Abstraction for providing fast failover

When the incoming packet needs to be forwarded to a group table to perform special operations such as replicating the packet to multiple ports for multicast / broadcast forwarding, or forward the packet using...