This post is a follow-up to Shortest Path forwarding with Openflow on RYU.
I originally made this code to show how to use SDN to achieve one of the most basic things you can do in a network: shortest path forwarding. In this post I’m answering common question on getting the code to work.
Quickstart:
Assuming you have all the dependencies, you should be able to run a mininet topology using:
sudo mn --topo=tree,4 --controller remote
After starting mininet start RYU using the following command:
bin/ryu-manager --observe-links ryu/app/sp.py
In my computer this is sufficient to discover the topology.
Now, let’s move on to the questions:
1 – Why do I see an empty or incomplete list of links?
Honestly, I’m not super familiar with the RYU topology app, so I don’t know. What works trying to restart Ryu/Mininet in different orders, so stop both applications and try starting Ryu first, if that doesn’t work do the opposite. Repeat until it works.
2 – Does it still work with a loop in the topology?
As far as my tests go it does work with a loop in the topology.
3 – Does it still work with a Spanning Tree?
To test it I start mininet, setup spanning tree using ovs-vsctl, then I start RYU. After RYU learns the topology it successfully lets the pings go through.
I had to restart RYU a couple times until it learned the topology
4- Why do I see so many packet-ins?
I did not care to handle floodstorms when I coded this, so if your topology has a loop and spanning-tree isn’t set, ARP and other types of flooded packets may be broadcast forever in your network
5 – Can I use another algorithm or set custom weights?
Yes. To set custom weights you just have to figure out how to add that information to the network graph. I’ll try to give an example for this soon.
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