OpenFlow overview

Overview

OpenFlow is a communication protocol for managing multiple NE forwarding planes using an external controller. The direct external control enables traffic management that is superior to the use of local ACL filters and routing information alone.

As an OpenFlow controller, the NFM-P uses a flow table on each switch to manage flows of routing information. Each entry in a flow table is a set of match criteria, packet counters, and the action to perform on matching packets.