Legacyflow: Bringing openflow to legacy network environments

Abstract: The OpenFlow protocol allows production networking environments such as campus networks, metropolitan networks or R&D networks, to be used as experimental infrastructure hosting, future internet architectures, softwares and protocols, in isolation to the production traffic. During rollout, one practical problem arises with legacy switches that do not support the OpenFlow protocol and need to be replaced/upgraded or worked around by means of costly network re-engineering. This poster proposes a new OpenFlow datapath, which is able to interact with non OpenFlow legacy equipment, creating a new approach to hybrid OpenFlow networks.