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

Chapter 3. Exploring OpenFlow

OpenFlow was created based on a better way to design and manage networks independent of different vendor equipment. Though OpenFlow seems to have appeared out of nowhere, OpenFlow is just one of the ways that we have historically tried to make computer networks more programmable using SDN.

In this chapter, we trace the history of programmable networks based on OpenFlow, how they work, and what the current state is. When done, you should have a good grasp of the following:

  • Concepts around active networking and programmable networks
  • The history of OpenFlow
  • The different versions of OpenFlow and what is the importance of each
  • Understanding OF-DPA, the open source OpenFlow agent from Broadcom
  • Using an OpenFlow agent such as Indigo
  • Open networking hardware from OCP networking vendors
  • How controllers interact with OpenFlow agents

In Chapter 1, Open and Proprietary Next Generation Networks, we talked about the control plane and the data plane. The control plane is where the...