Using our Mininet-based OpenFlow laboratory, we are going to set up a simple network consisting of an OpenFlow switch, three hosts, and an OpenFlow controller (POX). The topology of the network is shown in the following diagram:
Experimental network topology in our OpenFlow laboratory using Mininet
In addition to the POX controller, we also use the dpctl utility program to examine the flow table of the OpenFlow switch. As mentioned earlier, OpenFlow switches usually are listening on port 6634, which is considered for the dpctl channel. Even without an OpenFlow controller, we can use the dpctl utility program to communicate with the OpenFlow switch in our OpenFlow laboratory and inspect flow table entries or modify flows. In order to set up the network topology depicted in the previous figure inside our Mininet OpenFlow laboratory, we start Mininet with the following command-line parameters:
mininet@mininet-vm:~$ sudo mn --topo single,3 --mac --switch...