Loop Detection feature of OpenMUL

This article explains the spanning tree implementation of MUL SDN Controller.

Introduction

This feature is used when there are one or more occurrences of loop in the network. Spanning Tree implementation makes sure that there are no loops when there are two or more paths to reach a particular network element. Once a loop is occurred due to a broadcast stream then it can be deadly for the network. So, this makes Loop Detection feature an antidote for any network.

The CRUX

Loop detection module uses LLDP for implementing Spanning Tree.  When network element is added to a network, MUL SDN controller sends LLDP packets to every port of the attached network element. By doing this, MUL Controller gets the information about the network topology.

After getting all the information about the neighbours, port states needs to be decided.

Details of the process are : 

Openmul powers Govt. of South Korea’s unified LTE-Wifi-Wired project

Openmul was used as the SDN controller platform of choice for a super ambitious project of Govt. of South Korea to combine Wifi, LTE and Wired elements of network together using SDN.

Check the details of the project  : openmul-LTE-WiFi-Wired

MuL’s target audience – Part 1

We have strived hard to make Open-mul (and Pro version) one of the best performing SDN platforms in the world. Control plane performance and scalability is critical for SDN as there are so many things to manage and administer. But, MuL is not only about performance and newer openflow version support. We have focused on a few areas where we believe we can excel and bring real value  :

1) Openflow based ethernet fabrics :

With advanced topology discovery and Openstack integration, it becomes very easy to have an Ethernet fabric up and running in a matter of few hours (if not minutes). Fabrics which are fast, which, are free from any vendor lockin makes a lot of sense to lot of people. It is unfortunate to see technology like TRILL still being pushed when Openflow can do far far better. Many commercial vendors (barring few) have given up  Openflow based fabric. The main reasons being a) Lack of decent OpenFlow gear b) Lack of decent Software that makes up SDN c) Solid orchestration and network visibility/tools d) Last but not the least, effort by big vendors to push Openflow off-track and promote their own version of SDN

Ok,  but how do we solve performance/scalability issues with Openflow and controllers ?? The answer is simple – By knowing what are limits of Openflow and engineering solutions based on collective understanding of Openflow and legacy systems. Control plane performance/scalability is not a problem for us because of our grounds up design to meet those requirements. 

MuL 3.2.5 Commercially available now!

It gives us immense pleasure to announce availability of mul-3.2.5 (Carrier Grade).

Release Notes:

All the following features are fully supported.

Meter support

Group support

Port/Flow/Group/Meter/Queue statistics

MPLS

QinQ

Queuing

IPv6

High Availability

SSL

Many security and stability fixes in infrastructure

Features Specification:

Mul Documentation Links

MUL Documentation (English)

Mul Documentation (Korean)

If you need more help, kindly post your query at MuL discussion forum.

First ever release of open-source MuL SDN controller

MūL, is an openflow (SDN) controller. It has a C based muli-threaded infrastructure at its core. It supports a multi-level north bound interface for hooking up applications. It is designed for performance and reliability which is the need of the hour for deployment in mission-critical networks. Please visit Mul’s official project hosted at www.openmul.org for further technical details. We welcome community involvement in evolution of our open-source controller and hope it becomes one of the best open-source controller available.

We will use this blog to update about the latest news and info about MuL controller.