Purpose of the assessment

The main purpose of this assignment is to enable students to understand, demonstrate, and evaluate Openflow controllers, which is in line with learning outcomes of this unit as follows:

1. Plan, configure and troubleshoot controllers and SDN networks

2. Apply and evaluate security challenges in the SDN paradigm

3. Evaluate the emerging SDN applications

Assignment Description

Routers in traditional networks respond to Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) requests, for this, they also maintain cache. However, in Software Defined Networks (SDN) this is not the case, and router is not an intelligent device, rather a central controller handles ARP requests. So SDN controller such as POX controller sends back ARP reply upon receiving ARP requests.

For the first part of this assignment, create a network topology using mininet that can demonstrate following parts of the assignment i.e. second and third part.

For the second part of this assignment, perform following tasks:

1. Identify the ARP structure and its fields in a POX controller.
2. Configure the POX controller that replies ARP requests.

Hint [check the sample code for load balancer to get an example showing how to handle ARP packets.]

Similarly, Internet Control Management Protocol (ICMP) is used to handle error message. One of the possible error can be to receive a packet whose destination address i.e. the host does not exist in the network. The router sends [ICMP:Host Unreachable] message in traditional network, here the controller needs to send the same message.

For the third part of this assignment, read the ICMP protocol to figure out the error management options and select at least two errors. For an error the controller may receive the ICMP packets such as host unreachable error, write a routine to entertain such messages.

In the created scenario one should be able to:

- Ping the routers
- Ping all the other hosts.
- Tracing a host
- ICMP message if a host does not exist

Finally explain at least two attacks and their impact on Software defined network.

Assignment 2 report should contain following sections:

- Explanation of at least two attacks and their impact on SDN.

- Containing (Draw) a network topology along with sub-nets and IP addresses assigned to networking devices and hosts.

- Write all of the activities to achieve above tasks.

- Demonstration to show connectivity between all the hosts by ping command (Screen shots or video)

- Demonstration to show an error message when a host is not reachable or the destination IP address is in a sub-net that is not connected to the network (Screen shots or Video) Impact of.