PindSwitch: A SDN-based protocol-independent autonomic flow processing platform

Software Defined Networking (SDN) has already gained enormous momentum in the industry. Its innovative architecture that separates the control and forwarding planes allows third-party software developers more leeway in controlling network behavior. Since new protocols and forwarding schemes are needed to produce better network performance, efforts have been put forth in redefining user-defined protocol support. Besides, the concept of autonomicity has been proposed recently to solve the dilemma of management in complex network environments. In this paper, we propose the design and implementation of PindSwitch, which provides a SDN-based Protocol-independent platform to allow users to outline their own protocols´ format and flow processing rules into physical switches. We also introduce autonomicity and self-* attributes into SDN by extending the architecture of GANA to achieve better management of user-defined protocols and their processing schemes.