Today we are releasing version 1.0 of the OpenFlow Switch Specification as well as the OpenFlow Switch Reference Implementation. You can find it on the download page or pull it directly from the public git repository.

Unlike previous releases, OpenFlow 1.0 is the first release of the standard that we feel is ready to be implemented in generally available products. We have been running OpenFlow in our Stanford network over the past months, and it has proven itself for both production use as well as experimentation.

OpenFlow 1.0 adds a number of key features. The largest addition is Slicing, a simple QoS mechanism that allows the isolation of traffic in OpenFlow networks. Smaller changes include matching IP addresses in ARP packets, Flow Cookies to identify flows, selective port statistics and matching on the ToS bits in the IP header. The release also includes a large number of small changes to the specification and bug fixes in the reference implementation. For a complete list of changes read the Release Notes or the more detailed Wiki Page.

Hardware accelerated OpenFlow 1.0 capable switches are expected to become available over the next months and we will keep you updated on the OpenFlow Blog and the OpenFlow-Announce Mailing List. On the controller side the reference controller supports 1.0 and there is a version of NOX with partial support available. If you deploy OpenFlow 1.0, feedback and bug reports are highly welcome via Trac or the openflow-discuss mailing list.

This release would not have been possible without the work of (in alphabetical order) Guido Appenzeller, Peter Balland, Martin Casado, David Erickson, Glen Gibb, Brandon Heller, Mikio Hara, Bob Lantz, Masayoshi Kobayashi, Nick McKeown, Justin Pettit, Ben Pfaff, Rob Sherwood, Srini Seetharaman, Dan Talayco, Jean Tourrilhes, Tatsuya Yabe, KK Yap, Yiannis Yiakoumis as well as to the many other members of the OpenFlow community that provided valuable suggestions, feedback and testing.

Thanks to all of you!

Brandon, Glen and Guido

FlowVisor is a network virtualization layer built on top of OpenFlow.  The FlowVisor allows a single physical network to be sliced into multiple logical OpenFlow networks, allowing researchers to run multiple OpenFlow controllers on the same set of devices.  The technical report details the FlowVisor’s design and slicing mechanisms as well as an evaluation of how well the FlowVisor enforces isolation between slices.

The features described in the tech report have been included in the newly released FlowVisor version 0.4, including:

* preliminary bandwidth isolation between slices

* improved OpenFlow message rate limting for switch CPU isolation

* per-slice virtual topologies

Both the technical report and the new version are available from the FlowVisor’s webpage:

http://www.openflowswitch.org/wk/index.php/FlowVisor

Today we released version 0.9 of the OpenFlow Switch Specification as well as the OpenFlow Switch Reference Implementation. You can find it on the download page or pull it directly from the public git repository.

OpenFlow 0.9 is a major step towards the 1.0 release, and it incorporates a large number of bug fixes, clarifications and new features including  failover, emergency flow entries, VLAN Priority Matching and support for ToS field re-writing. For a complete list of changes read the Release Notes or the more detailed Wiki Page.

For OpenFlow deployments, we recommend to use OpenFlow 0.8.9 for now. Nox, the NetFPGA and other OpenFlow Hardware at this point is not yet compatible with 0.9. We will post on the OpenFlow Blog as these get updated. Feedback and bug reports are highly welcome via Trac or the openflow-discuss mailing list.

This release would not have been possible without the work of (in alphabetical order) David Erickson, Glen Gibb, Brandon Heller, Mikio Hara, Bob Lantz, Justin Pettit, Ben Pfaff, Jean Tourrilhes and David Underhill, Tatsuya Yabe, Yiannis Yiakoumis as well as to the many other members of the OpenFlow community that provided valuable suggestions, feedback and testing.

Thanks to all of you!

Guido, Brandon & Mikio

We’ve created a couple of mailing lists for all things OpenFlow. If you’re interested in OpenFlow or are actively using OpenFlow then we encourage you to join one or more of the lists.

The new lists are:

• OpenFlow-announce — a low-volume list for OpenFlow announcements including new versions of the specification and reference design releases
• OpenFlow-discuss — a list for general discussion of OpenFlow related topics including deployment, use, applications, controller development

Version 0.8.1-r2 of the OpenFlow Reference Test Suite has been added to downloads. Tests are easier to port, and require no external hardware.

Version 0.8.1-r1 of the OpenFlow Reference Test Suite has been added to downloads. Now with instructions for Debian install.

Version 0.8.1-r0 of the OpenFlow Reference Test Suite has been added to downloads. Now supports v0.8.1 of the OF spec.

Version 0.2.1.2 (Preview Release) of the OpenFlow reference NetFPGA implementation has been added to downloads.

Version 0.5.1 of the OpenFlow Reference Test Suite has been added to downloads. These tests simplify the process of bringing up new OpenFlow switch ports. downloads.

Version 0.8.1 of the OpenFlow specification has been added to documents. Many message formats have changed.