An intent-based network virtualization platform for SDN

Abstract

Currently, the Software Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm has attracted significant interests from industry and academia as a future network architecture. SDN brings many benefits to network operations and management including programmability, agility, elasticity, and flexibility. With SDN and OpenFlow, one of the promising SDN protocols, software defined Network Virtualization (NV) techniques can be designed and implemented via flow table segmentation to provision independent virtual networks (VNs). In this paper, we propose an intent based virtual network management platform based on software defined NV. The objective of the proposed NV platform is to automate the management and configuration of virtual networks based on high level tenant requirement specifications, called intents. The design and implementation of the platform is based on ONOS, an open-source SDN controller, and OpenVirteX, a network hypervisor. The platform is designed to provide multiple VNs over the same physical infrastructure to multiple tenants.