Mul

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.

loop-detection1

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 :  Continue reading →

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.  Continue reading →

Mul 3.0.1-beta available now

It gives us immense pleasure to announce availability of mul-3.0.1 (beta). With this MuL has hit couple of firsts : 1) One of the first to support Openflow v1.3.x  and, 2) One of the first to support both OF v1.3.x and backward compatibility with OF v1.0

The release is deemed beta due to lack of multiple switch implementations that we could test against. We welcome any switch vendors willing to interop their hardware (with of1.3.1 support) to get in touch with us for same.

Release Notes (3.0.1-beta) :

– Support for Openflow 1.3.x
* Wire protocol implementation
* Enhanced Multiple Groups support
* Enhanced Multiple Tables support
– Backward compatibility with Openflow 1.0 (supports both openflow versions)
– Many security and stability fixes in infrastructure
– Improved documentation (inside docs folder in source code)

Regards,

MuL development team

Hello App – Mul Controller App development note

This post will demonstrate how to write an application for Mul Controller.

Prerequisites

1. MuL Controller code and other required packages/libraries. Please refer to this post for more detailed instruction.

2. Average C language knowledge

Sample Application

A sample application for MuL controller can be found here .  Such an application is called a system app since it hooks up with internal apis of MuL controller.  (Another form of application is web-based application which makes use of REST/python apis which is not mentioned here and is covered here )   Continue reading →

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.