A Dependency Analyzing System for Communication Activities in Network Construction Exercises using Trema

Abstract

Nowadays, networking and virtualization technology has been developing in momentum. Software Defined Networking (SDN) has been popular for research and innovation. Universities and research labs are the basic points for innovation because innovation by academia and research organizations can accelerate the rate of change in industries. SDN construction exercises have been developed in e-Learning. Software- Defined Networking (SDN) is a networking approach that decouples the control plane from the data plane, allowing centralized network management. It remains popular in the research field for its benefits that researchers continue to explore various aspects such as: network security, traffic management, network virtualization, edge computing, machine learning and so forth. SDN's flexibility and programmability keep it relevant for emerging technologies and innovative network solutions. When performing network construction exercises, novice learners cannot understand the behavior of their network and fail to satisfy the requirements for the network reachability of communication data. In this system, learners construct SDN network construction exercises by using Trema and OpenFlow Protocol is used for communication between controllers and switches. Here, some learners cannot find their bugs from their settings due to the reasons such as ping cannot find delivery routes including switches, switches have no function to log rules used for choosing output ports for packets, and Trema cannot find execution statements used for setting rules to switches. To satisfy these problems, learners need help and the system will provide analysis results for learners in visual way so that they can narrow down executed statements that cause incorrect communication. This dissertation presents a Dependency Analyzing System for Communication Activities in Network Construction Exercises using Trema. It includes four main modules: constructing Software Defined Network (SDN) Construction Exercises Using Trema, collecting data packets from constructed virtual network, collecting executed statements in controller program, and giving the analysis results to learners so that they can narrow down their visualizing packet location and executing statement information in chronological order.