SDN Enabled and OpenFlow Compatible Network Performance Monitoring System

Abstract: Network performance monitoring holds a pivotal role in improving the overall network performance. It is essential to monitor the traffic statistics at Internet eXchange Points (IXPs) to optimize the traffic flows. The existing monitoring system either lacks usability or programmability. We present a Software Defined Networking (SDN) enabled and OpenFlow (OF) compatible network performance monitoring system (SDX-Manager) to improve the usability or programmability of IXP simultaneously. The proposed system integrates traditional IXP-Manager with the SDN controller and Grafana to better visualize the traffic. It provides a dashboard to the network administrator for defining rules over IXP, such as port blocking and traffic redirection. Furthermore, it facilitates the administrative tasks that include adding, modifying, and deleting the users and IXP objects (Ports, Switches). The proposed SDX-Manager is deployed and tested in a virtual and physical environment using OF enabled Allied Telesis Switch. Results indicate that SDX-Manager has improved network analysis using different statistics such as packets in/out per second, bits in/out per second, scrape duration, and query count.