engleski

Dynamic tracking of a user in Software Defined Networks

The transition from traditional vertically integrated networks to software defined networks is still at its beginning. Traditional networks are rigid for changes. In addition, the introduction of new protocols, services and applications is hard, not practical, and limited to big network vendors which can finance development of hardware for special applications. In order to solve these problems, SDN has been introduced. The main feature of this paradigm is splitting control and data plane. SDN enables independent development of applications for the application layer which communicates with the control layer. The control layer converts received instructions in form which SDN-based switch understands and can work with. SDN-based switch is a device from the infrastructure layer along with other network devices. The main component of SDN is the controller which communicates with user applications, processes its requests and translates them in the language that devices from the infrastructure layer understand. Devices in that layer are switches and routers which are connected with user hosts or other network devices. OpenFlow is the most widely used network protocol for communication between controller and SDN-based devices. Example of this functionality can be found in Network Packet Broker. It is an application for filtering input streams by given criteria and forwarding them to selected output ports. The difference between “standard” switch and SDN- based switch is that SDN-based switch can filter traffic by MAC addresses, IP addresses, VLAN tags, protocol and protocol port number. This can be used for traffic monitoring, security data processing, analysis of traffic flows, etc. One of the functionalities for Network Packet Broker is dynamic tracking of a user. The user is given an IP address when connecting to the network. If the network is changed (e.g. from one LAN to another, moving from LAN to mobile network, moving from mobile network to Wi-Fi, etc.), the user gets a new IP address. RADIUS server enables the tracking of user’s address. When the user connects to network, data for that user is refreshed and when queried, delivered to the application.

software defined network - SDN ; RADIUS ; controller ; data layer ; control layer ; splitting layer ; Network Packet Broker ; dynamic tracking of user

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