Monitoraggio di rete con tecnologie SDN (Software-Defined Networks) = Network Monitoring with SDN (Software-Defined Networks) technology

In the networking world, the capability to easily monitor, manage, and program many network devices is gaining attention. The paradigm called Software Defined Network (SDN) is the emerging architecture that takes over this challenge. It allows to separate the network intelligence control logic from the physical data-plane appliance, providing a centralized point of control, called SDN controller, that is able to monitor the network behavior and dynamically react to changes with new network configurations. So, the underlying hardware technologies are still there, but they are programmed by means of third-party software applications. In fact, the power of the SDN technology relies on internal services that expose APIs to applications to help them manage endpoints and the entire infrastructure with higher speed and flexibility. The aim of this document is to deploy the SDN paradigm in a “traditional” energy distribution infrastructure, to control the ICT network and react to different events (e.g., fault or security attacks) with the proper counter-measure (e.g., re-route the traffic or isolate the malicious source). This document will start by analyzing the available SDN controllers, with a special focus on the ones with an open architecture that are more suitable for research and experimentation purposes, presenting the different offered features and their overall architecture. Furthermore, this document will present the main characteristics of some application/network data monitoring technologies. The SDN controller needs to establish a connection not only with traditional network devices such as routers or switches, but also with other ICT electrical components (e.g., embedded devices used in the electrical grid), which are equipped with software probes and monitoring tools in order to complete the information about their network/application activities and internal working status. All the generated monitoring data are collected in a unique datastore that is also responsible to analyze them and give the proper information to the controller. Finally, this document will propose an overall architecture that can be used to control the ICT network infrastructure, with the objectives mentioned above. The operability and responsiveness of the proposed solution will be achieved by the definition and implementation of two use cases that trigger the control logic into action. They enclose aspects ranging from security, isolating the node that issues malicious traffic, to redundancy and fault tolerance, redirecting the stream of data toward “backup” services in case of catastrophic events.