Providing rich cloud networking by enhancing traditional networking solutions is quite challenging. Traditional networking is not scalable to cloud proportions by its design nor able to cope with automatic configuration. OpenStack Networking introduces the concept of a plugin, which is a backend implementation of the OpenStack Networking API. In order to implement logical API requests, a plugin can utilize a variety of technologies. Some plugins might use Linux IP tables and basic VLANs, while other implementations might use more advanced technologies, such as L2-in-L3 tunneling or OpenFlow.
Plugins can have different features for hardware requirements, properties, performance, scale, or operator tools. OpenStack supports a wide spectrum of plugins. Therefore, the cloud administrator is able to consider different options and decide which networking technology fits a particular use case scenario. Among different plugins for Neutron, in this section, we will consider the Floodlight...