Heterogeneous Interconnection between SDN and Layer2 Networks Based on NSI

Recently, Software Defined Network (SDN) technology has become widely used to take advantage of its features, including capabilities for optimization, flexibility, and customization. Many companies and organizations are applying this technology to build SDN networks for testbeds or production networks to address their requirements for optimization and customization. Currently, north bound and south bound APIs, which integrate SDN controllers and switches, are widely defined and implemented. However, an east-west interface standard for the communications among several SDN domains does not yet exist. In this paper, we propose such a method using Network Service Interface (NSI) to solve the east-west communication problem among SDN domains. The proposed method first uses OpenVirtex as the hypervisor in each SDN domain. We also extend OpenNSA, an open-source implementation of NSI agent, to deal with local OpenVirtex networks for communicating with other SDN domains. In addition, by using the standard NSI protocol, cross-platform interconnections between SDN and legacy networks can be achieved.