C-BAS: Certificate-Based AAA for SDN Experimental Facilities

Abstract

Efficient authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) management mechanisms will be key for the widespread adoption of SDN experimentation facilities beyond the confines of academic labs. In particular, we are interested in a robust AAA infrastructure to identify experimenters, police their actions based on the associated roles, facilitate secure resource sharing, and provide for detailed accountability. Currently, however, said facilities are forced to employ a patchy AAA infrastructure which lacks several of the aforementioned features. This paper proposes a certificate-based AAA architecture for SDN experimental facilities, which is by design both secure and flexible. As this work is implementation-driven and aims for a short deployment cycle in current facilities, we also outline a credible migration path which we are currently pursuing actively.