This is a short overview of ON.LAB FlowVisor, a n open source network slicer.

1. FlowVisor
At A Glance
1

2. ON.LAB Portfolio
3rd party
components
Network OS
Apps Apps
Network OS
Apps Apps
Open Interfaces
Open Interfaces
Network Hypervisor
Forwarding Mininet
ONOS
SDN IP-Peering
FLOWVISOR

3. FlowVisor At A Glance
FlowVisor is a special purpose OpenFlow controller that acts as a transparent proxy
between OpenFlow switches and multiple OpenFlow controllers. FlowVisor creates rich
''slices'' of network resources, isolates them and delegates control of each slice to a
different network operating system.
• Available on Github with
Debian/Ubuntu binary and also
Red Hat RPM
• 900 downloads per quarters
• Stanford production network,
GENI – Multi-tenancy
• NEC & Ericsson research labs
• Hundreds of network slices in
production networks
• Available today – Stanford license
• 100,000 flow space entries
Via Stanford general OpenFlow discussion
forum
NETWORK HYPERVISOR SOFTWARE FOR ANY OPENFLOW INFRASTRUCTURE
Demonstrations Support
Usage
Development
Distribution
Showcased at ONS in 2012, GENI
GEC9 in 2010

4. What You Can Do
Network research in real production
environments
o Deployed in many production
networks
o Isolation for minimum network
disruption between users
o Delegation scope
Customizable
Multi-
vendors
Free and fast
way to
experiment SDN

5. What You Can Do
Free and fast way to experiment
SDN
o Open source freely downloadable
controller
o Offer all the foundational functions to
learn about network virtualization
o New method for deploying services
rapidly
Network
research in
real
production
environments
Customizable
Multi-
vendors

6. What You Can Do
Customizable
o Ability to modify code and adapt to
your needs
o Configuration and monitoring
interface in JSON for users
o Java programming language for
developers
o Ability to let users opt in to services
Network
research in
real
production
environments
Free and fast
way to
experiment SDN
Multi-
vendors

7. What You Can Do
Multi-vendors
o Different infrastructure as well as
different guest network OS
o Based on open standards and running
on multi-vendor infrastructure
o Interoperability with NEC, IBM, Juniper,
HP, Dell, Brocade, Extreme, Pronto,
Intel, OVS
Network
research in
real
production
environments
Free and fast
way to
experiment SDN
Customizable

8. FlowVisor Users Told Us…
FlowVisor provides the functionality of a network
demultiplexer and offers a very flexible management
over your control plane.
•Roger Michoud
•Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)
FlowVisor acts a an elegant and robust virtualization
layer for OpenFlow-based campus networks. We are
very satisfied with its use within our project OFELIA
testbeds, which are composed of OpenFlow resources
that need to be virtualized. Flowvisor enables multi-
tenancy of experimental slices over the same substrate
network, which is a basic requirement for our testbeds
•Vasileios Kotronis
•ETH Zurich

9. FlowVisor Users Told Us…
"We have been using FlowVisor for over 3 years at our
research lab (WINLAB). Even when it used to come with
the label of 'alpha release' it would work as promised,
and it's only gotten more solid and easier to work with. It
was also one of the first platforms that I got to look at in
terms of SDN software architecture and development,
and it's become a reference for various parts of my own
projects."
•Ayaka Koshibe, Student at WINLAB

10. FlowVisor Evolution
University Research
2008
Environment: C++
Users: University Researchers
Test new research ideas
University IT Operations
2010
Environment: Java
Users: University IT departments
Feature rich
Deployments: Scale, 50-100 networks,
production to slice network resources
V1.0 – Foundation
February 2013
Environment: Configuration and
Monitoring in JSON
Features:
Quality & Scalability & Performance
API improvement
Slice based statistics
Soak testing
Expanded HW test
Unit test coverage
Automated regression
Support: ON.LAB
Cloud Readiness
More granular slicing capabilities
Integration with other cloud
frameworks (e.g. OpenStack)
Support of OpenFlow 1.x versions
Scale and HA capabilities