08-12-2009, 04:02 PM
Nick McKeown et. al., OpenFlow: Enabling Innovation in College Campuses, ACM CCR 2008
The OpenFlow technology abstract the information to be exchanged to be 'flows', and lets the switch hardware perform flow switching. As to how to decide the flow switching rules, OpenFlow allows it to be decided outside the switch, e.g., by an operator or system designer.
As the name 'flow' implies, the switching can potentially be conducted on a much larger unit than a packet. This opens the opportunity of dramatically increasing performance.
The OpenFlow technology abstract the information to be exchanged to be 'flows', and lets the switch hardware perform flow switching. As to how to decide the flow switching rules, OpenFlow allows it to be decided outside the switch, e.g., by an operator or system designer.
As the name 'flow' implies, the switching can potentially be conducted on a much larger unit than a packet. This opens the opportunity of dramatically increasing performance.