Introduction

• new network architecture for the enterprise
• enterprise networks comprised of applications, protocols, w/ reliability and security constraints
• management solutions are weak which makes network management expensive and error-prone
• approaches
  • physical middle-box to route all traffic through
  • change and/or layer more protocols
• ethane – three principles
  • network should be governed by policies declared over high-level names
  • policy should determine the path that packets follow
  • the network should enforce a strong binding between a packet and its origin
• additional ethan features:
  • security follows mgmt
  • incrementally deployable

Ethane design overview

• ethane control the network by not allowing any communication between end hosts without explicit permission.
• central Controller with global network policy
• 2nd component is a switch: simple/dumb with flow table and communication channel to the controller
• names/binding/policy language
  • controller needs host/service-type IP mappings
  • controller knows about types of machines and where they are located (physical port, AP, etc)
• five basic ethane activities
  • registration (with controller)
  • bootstrapping (connect to switch to controller)
  • authentication
  • verify users are allowed to have packets routed in the network
  • flow setup: when a packet is un-recognized, switch forwards it to the controller for decision
    • following packets use same decision
  • forwarding: if a controller allows a path, sends the packet back to a switch to forward it based on a new flow entry
• ethane switches only have a partial view of the network, controller has entire view
• switches in the network can be much “dumber” and replace een routers
  • controller takes care of telling the switch where packets should be routed
  • ethane switches need to maintain much less state than a forwarding switch
• flow table and flow entries
  • switch datapath is a managed flow table
  • flow entries have a header to match packets against and corresponding rule
  • per-flow entries and per-host entries
  • only controller can add entries into a flow table
  • flow table implemented with two exact-match tables – can use exact matches+hashing than TCAMs (longest-prefix)
  • switch needs a small local manager/OS to establish and maintain a channel to the controller
  • if switch is not in the sam broadcast domain as the controller, use IP tunneling
• controller
  • registration: all entities needing to be named by the network (hosts, protocols, switchers, users, APs) must register
  • authentication: all entities must authenticate with the network
  • track bindings: tracks connections between names addresses, and physical ports
  • namespace interface: a way for a management entity to view/analyze network behavior
  • authorization: controller must determine which entities have access to particular resources
  • enforce resource limits: must be able to manage resource utilization of entities in the network
• broadcast and multicast
  • switch holds bitmap to determine flow destinations
  • controller builds multicast tree
• replicating the controller
  • use journaling+replication (e.g. paxos/raft) to keep consistent state in case of failure
• link failures:
  • switches send neighbor discovery messages to neighbors to determine link state
  • controller can receive said messages as a “health check”
• bootstrapping
  • use MST algorithm to get packets to the controller.
• pol-eth policy language
  • network policy declared as a set of rules
    • each with corresponding condition and action (allow/deny)
    • rules must be specifically allowed
  • each rule independent

results

• flow setup time increases with controller load…about 1.6ms for 10k+ node network
• shortcomings
  • broadcast traffic takes 90% of flows
  • trusts end hosts to not relay traffic around policies
  • assumes transport port numbers corresponds with traffic type (e.g. 80/443 for http, 22 for ssh)
  • ethane switches rely on ethernet addresses to identify flows
    • spoofing a MAC can fool ethane into delivering packets to the wrong hosts -