Intro to OpenFlow Tutorial with Ryu Controller



This is a simple OpenFlow tutorial that will guide you through the writing of simple OpenFlow controllers to showcase some of the OpenFlow capabilities. We are going to write three different controllers:

  1. Write a controller that will duplicate all the traffic of the OpenFlow switch out a specific port
  2. TCP Port Forward controller. Divert all traffic destined to host A on TCP port X to TCP port Y
  3. Proxy Controller. Write a controller that will divert all traffic destined to host A, TCP port X to host B, TCP port Y

In this tutorial we are using the OpenFlow Software Switch, Open vSwitch (OVS). The general topology is as pictured below. In general, the controller just needs to have a public IP address, so that it can exchange messages with the OpenFlow switch. The controller for the switch can run anywhere in the Internet. For this tutorial we are going to use a Ryu controller, which is just one example of many controller frameworks.


  • Familiarity with how to reserve GENI resources with any of the GENI Tools (GENI Experimenter Portal, Omni, Jacks). If you don't know you can take any of the tutorials:
    • Reserving resources using Jacks tutorial
    • Reserving resources using Omni tutorial
  • Familiarity with logging in to GENI compute resources.
  • Basic understanding of OpenFlow. If you are doing this tutorial at home, flip through the tutorial's slides
  • Familiarity with the Unix Command line
  • Familiarity with the python programming language. We are going to use the Ryu controller, which is just one example of many controller frameworks, and Ryu is written in python.


Where to get help:


Tutorial Instructions

Last modified 10 months ago Last modified on 02/15/19 12:43:20