Multi-tenant isolation in software defined networks

Abstract

Software Defined Networking (SDN) provides a flexible and programmable infrastructure for future networks. SDN supports multi-domain networks where customers, called tenants, can share network resources on the large data centers. In the multi-tenant environment, tenants can share the network elements while keeping them isolated from each other. In this paper, we describe an isolated multi-tenant solution where the tenants can have control over their assigned network resources. The described approach provides isolation through VxLAN and configuration of flow tables in the OpenFlow switch. VxLAN tunnels are used to isolate packets transmitted by different tenants. Virtual Network Identifiers (VNIs) are assigned to the flow table for identification of the tenant.