TopoGen: A network topology generation architecture with application to automating simulations of software defined networks

Simulation is an important tool to validate the performance impact of control decisions in Software Defined Networks (SDN). Yet, the manual modeling of complex topologies that may change often during a design process can be a tedious error-prone task. We present TopoGen, a general purpose architecture and tool for systematic translation and generation of network topologies. TopoGen can be used to generate network simulation models automatically by querying information available at diverse sources, notably SDN controllers. The DEVS modeling and simulation framework facilitates a systematic translation of structured knowledge about a network topology into a formal modular and hierarchical coupling of preexisting or new models of network entities (physical or logical). TopoGen can be flexibly extended with new parsers and generators to grow its scope of applicability. This allows to design arbitrary workflows of topology transformations. We tested TopoGen in a network engineering project for the ATLAS detector at CERN.