Implementation of Hub, Switch and Load Balancer Scenarios in a Software-Defined Datacenter Network

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a networking design approach, which separates the data plane from the control plane, providing the network with certain benefits due to centralized programmatic control. SDN provides a centralized view and enables management of the entire network. It offers flexibility in configuration, reduces time to deploy, provides automation and facilitates building a network without requiring the knowledge of any vendor-specific software/hardware. SDN offers the datacenter network benefits such as improving traffic and security management as well as providing a scalable infrastructure. Load balancing enhances the performance of the network by distributing traffic among servers and therefore preventing congestion and server underutilization. This paper aims to explore SDN and test its implementation and demonstrate how to implement its concepts within a datacenter network. The experiment considers the datacenter network implemented in Sudan University of Science and Technology as a case study. The edited network topology is made up of a Demilitarize Zone (DMZ) having three servers, a Local Area Network (LAN) and a main switch. The Hub, Switch and Load balancer scenarios are implemented using Mininet emulator. In addition, the three scenarios are tested using external devices and analyzed using Wireshark. Moreover, the connectivity of HTTP and FTP is verified.