Open Networking Summit 2012 - 16 Apr 2012

OpenFlow (an open source networking technology) research is currently being conducted at Victoria University of Wellington, UC Berkeley, UC Stanford, and University of Waikato.

Google has explained how it is revamping its network, which is ranked highly amongst large Internet service providers, using an open source networking technology called OpenFlow.

The Open Networking Summit 2012 was held on the 16th -18th of April at Santa Clara, California. Participants included representatives from US universities (UC Berkeley, UC Stanford, Georgia Tech, Princeton, Cornell), major network equipment vendors (Juniper, Cisco, HP, NEC, IBM, Extreme), and tech companies (Google, Deutsche Telekom, Verizon).

Steven Levy from Wired outlined Google’s plans, and Urs Höelzle, Google’s head of infrastructure, explained the technology behind OpenFlow. OpenFlow is the linchpin of Google’s network overhaul. It is an open source technology that separates packet switching and management. Network control is moved to servers.

The swap to OpenFlow was carried out data centre by data centre. Networking equipment was pre-deployed to take over half the capacity. Höelzle said that Google will make its own networking equipment, and already makes its own servers. Google’s routers power the G-Scale network.

Software expertise is key to Google’s ability to schedule traffic and Off-load work to regions. Google also needs to predict the time to move Back-ups and other key tasks.

Höelzle also discussed the returns the company expects on its investment. The returns aren’t quantified just yet, but Google has hundreds of engineers working on the project.

Victoria University of Wellington is also supporting OpenFlow Research in conjunction with REANNZ through a Bootcamp to be held on the 7th May. The Bootcamp is aimed at giving participants practical experience at implementing OpenFlow, and will involve building and trouble-shooting an OpenFlow-based L3 router.

For more information, contact the engagement team at REANNZ. engagement@reannz.co.nz