Book Image

Building Modern Networks

By : Steven Noble
Book Image

Building Modern Networks

By: Steven Noble

Overview of this book

<p>As IT infrastructures become more software-defined, networking operations tend to be more automated with falling levels of manual configuration at the hardware level. Building Modern Networks will brush up your knowledge on the modern networking concepts and help you apply them to your software-defined infrastructure.</p> <p>In this book you'll gain the knowledge necessary to evaluate, choose, and deploy a next generation network design. We will cover open and closed network operating systems (NOS) along with the protocols used to control them such as OpenFlow, Thrift, Opflex, and REST. You will also learn about traffic engineering and security concepts for NGNs. You will also find out how to fine-tune your network using QoS and QoE.</p> <p>By the end of the book, you'll be well versed in simplifying the way you design, build, operate, and troubleshoot your network.</p>
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
2
Networking Hardware and Software
4
Using REST and Thrift APIs to Manage Switches
9
Where to Start When Building a Next Generation Network

Understanding OF-DPA — the open source OpenFlow agent from Broadcom


Broadcom's OpenFlow Data Plane Abstraction (OF-DPA) is an application software component that implements an adaptation layer between OpenFlow and the Broadcom Silicon SDK. OF-DPA enables scalable implementation of OpenFlow 1.3 on Broadcom switch devices.

OF-DPA was originally released to assist the networking community in building OpenFlow agents. The Broadcom SDK for switches is a licensed closed product while OF-DPA exposes APIs that can be utilized by OpenFlow agents:

Some of the example API calls available are as follows:

  • ofdpaBcmCommand: This executes a Broadcom command on the device and reports whether it was successful or failed (1 or 0)
  • ofdpaFlowAdd: This adds a flow to the switching table
  • ofdpaFlowDelete: This deletes a flow from the switching table
  • ofdpaFlowModify: This modifies an existing flow table entry
  • ofdpaDropStatusAdd: This drops an entry from the switching table
  • ofdpaDropStatusActionGet: This checks the status...