Lithium: Event-Driven Network Control
Title | Lithium: Event-Driven Network Control |
Publication Type | Reports |
Year of Publication | 2012 |
Authors | Kim H, Voellmy A, Burnett S, Feamster N, Clark R |
Date Published | 2012/// |
Institution | Georgia Institute of Technology |
Abstract | This paper introduces event-driven network control, a network control framework that makes networks easier to manage by automating many tasks that must currently be performed by manually modifying low-level, distributed, and complex device configuration. We identify four policy domains that inherently capture many events: time, user, history, and traffic flow. We then present Lithium, an event-driven network control framework that can implement policies expressed using these domains. Lithium can support policies that automatically react to a wide range of events, from fluctuations in traffic volumes to changes in the time of day. Lithium allows network operators to specify networkwide policies in terms of a high-level, event-driven policy model, as opposed to configuring individual network devices with low-level commands. To show that Lithium is practical, general, and applicable in different types of network scenarios, we have deployed Lithium in both a campus network and a home network and used it to implement more flexible and dynamic network policies. We also perform evaluations to show that Lithium introduces negligible overhead beyond a conventional OpenFlow-based control framework. |
URL | http://hdl.handle.net/1853/43377(link is external) |