OpenQFlow: Scalable OpenFlow with Flow-Based QoS

Abstract

OpenFlow, originally proposed for campus and enterprise network experimentation, has become a promising SDN architecture that is considered as a widely-deployable production network node recently. It is, in a consequence, pointed out that OpenFlow cannot scale and replace today's versatile network devices due to its limited scalability and flexibility. In this paper, we propose OpenQFlow, a novel scalable and flexible variant of OpenFlow. OpenQFlow provides a fine-grained flow tracking while flow classification is decoupled from the tracking by separating the inefficiently coupled flow table to three different tables: flow state table, forwarding rule table, and QoS rule table. We also develop a two-tier flow-based QoS framework, derived from our new packet scheduling algorithm, which provides performance guarantee and fairness on both granularity levels of micro- and aggregate-flow at the same time. We have implemented OpenQFlow on an off-the-shelf microTCA chassis equipped with a commodity multicore processor, for which our architecture is suited, to achieve high-performance with carefully engineered software design and optimization.