Analysis of OpenFlow and NETCONF as SBIs in Managing the Optical Link Interconnecting Data Centers in an SDN Environment

SDN technology has primarily been applied to all types and size of network ranging from Ethernet services to large cloud environment. More recently, interest has turned towards extending programmability of the OTN. In the SDN architecture, SBIs are used to communicate between the SDN controller and the switches or routers in the network. In this thesis we deploy two major protocols as SBIs in managing BoD across the interconnected data centers over the OTN. The OpenFlow and NETCONF are the two SBIs deployed between the OpenDayLight controller and the BTI7800 optical edge transponders. We present the OpenVSwitch architecture modified for referencing the optical ports of the BTI7800 devices. Experimental demonstration and performance of both BTI YANG-based NETCONF and OpenFlow protocols are presented. Our experiments show that NETCONF is faster and efficiently handles the control message; whereas in a fully loaded system, OpenFlow offers better bandwidth utilization.