Introduction to OpenFlow
Mohit Kumar Jaiswal · Advances in systems analysis, software engineering, and high performance computing book series · 2018
The SDN controller is interfaced with the hardware of the network (i.e., with switches and routers) using OpenFlow. Basically, OpenFlow is an open interface used for configuring the forwarding tables of network switch according to the desired path derived by the SDN controller. OpenFlow enables more innovation in controller platforms and applications, and describes a solution for each frame or packet flow. OpenFlow is based on an ethernet switch with an internal flow-table and a standardized interface to add and remove flow entries of forwarding table of the system. The control mechanism from each one of the switch and router up to SDN controller are encrypted with the transport layer security (TLS) and secure socket layer (SSL) OpenFlow protocols to provide the additional security inside the network.