Who Does What: SDN Controllers
Open Source SDN Controller Projects
Organization: NOXRepo
Controllers: NOX & POX. See this page for more on NOX, and this page for more on POX.
About: NOXRepo claims that NOX is the original OpenFlow controller, and facilitates the development of fast C++ controllers on Linux. POX supports Python on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, targeted largely at research and education.
Organization: ON.Lab
Controller: SDN Open Network Operating System (ONOS). See this page for more information.
About: The Open Networking Lab (ON.Lab), a non-profit organization founded by SDN inventors and leaders from Stanford University and UC Berkeley, set up the ONOS Project to develop open source SDN tools.
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Organization: OpenContrail
Controller: OpenContrail Controller. See this page for more information.
About: The open source, Juniper-sponsored OpenContrail architecture includes a "a logically centralized but physically distributed" SDN controller, virtual router, analytics engine, and published northbound APIs. (Juniper also supports OpenDaylight.)Find out more:
Organization: OpenDaylight Project
Controllers: Helium is the latest release: see this page for more information. The initial release is Hydrogen: see this page for further details.
About: A Linux Foundation collaborative project, OpenDaylight is developing an open platform for network programmability enabling SDN and NFV networks of any size and scale.
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Controller: Open Mul. For more information, see this page.
About: Open Mul is designed for performance and reliability, flexibility, and easiness to learn. It's an OpenFow SDN controller platform with a C-language-based multi-threaded infrastructure at its core, and a multi-level northbound interface for hosting applications. Mul means "base" or "root" in Sanskrit, and is pronounced to rhyme with "school."
Organization: Project Floodlight
Controller: Floodlight Open SDN Controller. See this page for more information.
About: Launched by Big Switch Networks, Floodlight is an OpenFlow, Apache-licensed SDN controller.
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Controller: Ryu. For more information, see this page.
About: Ryu is a software defined networking framework with a well-defined API designed to make it easy for developers to create new network management and control applications. It supports standard protocols including OpenFlow, Netconf, and OF-config. Ryu means "flow" in Japanese, and is pronounced to rhyme with "see you."
Organization: Stanford University
Controller: Beacon. See this page for more information.
About: Cross-platform, modular, Java-based OpenFlow controller that supports both event-based and threaded operation.
Controller: Trema. For more information, see this page.
About: Trema is a framework for developing OpenFlow controllers in Ruby and C.
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