Performance analysis of white box switch on Software Defined Networking using open vSwitch

Abstract

Complexity and flexibility are the main problems that will be faced in the world of the future network. To be able to answer these problems, a method called Software Defined Network (SDN) is being developed. The SDN concept is to separate the network's controller and forwarding plane of the hardware. In this research, SDN component, white box switch was built. To test its performance, RTT and throughput of some configuration were measured. The result is compared to conventional switch, which is Cisco Catalyst 2950. White Box Switch was created of a computer with 2.50 GHz processor and 32 GBytes memory. The result shows that performance of Cisco Catalyst 2950 is superior to white box switch because of its ASIC that allow it to forward data in hardware. Furthermore minimum specification of white box switch can be calculated, that is 1.225 GHz processor and 1 GBytes memory. To get the best performance, we can use single-board computer to be used as white box switch. Single-board computer contains all of its hardware in a single-board and it will give best performance of a computer.