SDN testing and debugging tools: A survey

Software Defined Networking (SDN) enables the use of programmable networking devices including switches and routers. As with other software, bugs are inevitable in SDN and ruin software quality. To ensure good quality SDN software, programmable devices and components in a SDN environment must be continuously checked and improved. To achieve this, the following SDN testing and debugging tools are available in the market: OFf, ndb, OFRewind, NICE, FlowChecker, Veriflow, SOFT, and OFTest. These tools are surveyed in this paper by considering their capabilities, advantages, and disadvantages. The main capabilities are: checking consistency of flow tables, backtraces of network traffic, checking switch forwarding rules, recording and replaying of all or selected traffic, and detection of network configuration changes.