n-casting using OpenFlow

Written in just 227 lines of C/C++, n-casting demonstrates the ease of developing mobility services on top of OpenFlow Wireless. In the demonstration, we show how a video stream can be rerouted with ease across WiFi and WiMAX.  Moreover in a lossy wireless network, packets can be replicated in network to improve video quality.  Here we aim to showcase

1. how an OpenFlow network can allow flexible plumbing of flows for mobile networks, and
2. how it provide an architecture that seamlessly incorporate multiple wireless technologies.

The Demonstration

You may have seen the n-casting using OpenFlow demonstration in SIGComm 2009 at the OpenFlow “Room”, during the OpenFlow workshop and/or the more elaborate version at Mobicom (which received honorable mention). If not, you can see the demonstration here in video:

You can also view the HD version posted.

Reproducing the Demonstration

To allow others to recreate the demonstration, we have posted all the source codes and documented them on a wiki page.  Links to the various resources used to create this demonstration is also provided.

People

This demonstration is brought to you by Kok-Kiong Yap, Te-Yuan Huang, Masayoshi Kobayashi, Michael Chan, Rob Sherwood and others.

The demonstration is also only possible with help from the following people:

• David Underhill, Nikhil Handigol, Jiang Zhu and Peyman Kazemian who have made the incredible contributions in the base code of OpenRoads, ENVI and also the physical setup used for the demonstration.
• The folks at NEC, esp. Ippei Akiyoshi and Chiba, who has promptly supported many of our requests over the switches and WiMAX basestation.
• The people at Beceem who has helped in providing the WiMAX client driver.