Testing the functionality of firewall in software-defined networking

Abstract

Software-defined Networking (SDN) is a new network architecture that separates the control plane from the data plane in a computer network environment. SDN uses OpenFlow protocol in the control plane to achieve a more flexible operation, monitoring and networking management system. Although SDN offers various advantages over a traditional network, one of the challenges facing the use of this technology is the limited amount of knowledge on implementing various aspects of a network in a SDN, as well as the increasing number of platforms that may be used in the implementation. This paper addresses some of this concern by describing the implementation and functionality of firewalls in SDN environment. The paper uses a software firewall application based on OpenFlow protocol, built on top of Ryu controller. It shows some of the firewall functionalities in SDN without the need for hardware. Using the Mininet network emulator on virtual machine, the experiments conducted in the research describe how the purpose of a firewall set-up can be at different layers of the OSI model. The paper also discusses the efficiency of a SDN firewall by describing the latency and throughput of the emulated networks.