SIMPLE-fying middlebox policy enforcement using SDN

Abstract

Networks today rely on middleboxes to provide critical performance, security, and policy compliance capabilities. Achieving these benefits and ensuring that the traffic is directed through the desired sequence of middleboxes requires significant manual effort and operator expertise. In this respect, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) offers a promising alternative. Middleboxes, however, introduce new aspects (e.g., policy composition, resource management, packet modifications) that fall outside the purvey of traditional L2/L3 functions that SDN supports (e.g., access control or routing).