GOX is a suite of POX components that allow the development of SDN applications that rely on a Neo4j Graph Database-based network topology.
GOX was developed as part of 3-months intership in the ENSIIE engineering school in Evry, France.
GOX is composed of 3 main core components :
- gox: It is the main component which is tasked with properly starting GOX by launching every secondary components which are essentials
- gox_db: It is GOX's Neo4j database management component. It handles connections and requests heading to the Neo4j database
- gox_network: It is the script that handles network events and other network functions that GOX requires. It uses gox_db script so as to communicate with the database
The functioning of GOX also depends on the 2 following POX components :
- openflow.discovery: For registering the connectivity between switches
- host_tracker: For gathering information on the hosts on the network
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GOX depends on Python 3 and was developed using Python 3.9.
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GOX depends on POX to function. So make sur you have POX's latest version. All the necessary information on how to install and use POX can be found in POX's documentation
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To work, GOX needs to be able to connect to a Neo4j database. You can use Neo4j Server or Neo4j Desktop to create a graph database.
Once you have installed POX and have your Neo4j database up and running, simply copy the python scripts gox.py, gox_db.py and gox_network.py (located in the gox/ folder) to POX's ext/ directory.
GOX can be started like any other POX component. Only the main core component of GOX called "gox" should be started. Indeed, this component will also launch gox_db, gox_network, openflow.discovery and host_tracker
./pox.py gox --uri="bolt://localhost:7687"To be able to connect properly to the Neo4j database, you have to specify a few arguments:
- uri: address of the Neo4j database. In the previous example, "bolt" is the protocol method used to connect to Neo4j, and it can differ for you. The port may change as well.
- username: username for the Neo4j database. By default, GOX will consider the username to be "neo4j", like Neo4j's default user.
- password: password associated to the username of the Neo4j database. By default, it is "password". You should change it!
./pox.py gox --uri="<protocol>://<ip/hostname>:<port>" --username="<username>" --password="<password>"GOX is shipped with a Proof-of-Concept level 2 forwarding application which calculates the shortest path between two hosts on network. You should take a look at it if you want to develop new graph-based SDN applications using GOX.
To use it, simply copy the associated Python script from GOX's repository in the app/ folder to POX's ext/ directory and execute it this way:
./pox.py gox <arguments> gox_l2_forwardingGOX allows you to develop SDN applications using a powerful graph database. The network topology is stored within this database, and applications can communicate with it for implementing new logic on the network.
GOX provides methods within the gox_db component for interacting with the database for very simple tasks. However, it will not be sufficient for more complexe mechanisms, so you should take a look at how to query the Neo4j database using Cypher.
Executing GOX applications is the same as executing POX applications, so you should take a look at POX's documentation.
I would like to thank Fetia BANNOUR and Stefania DUMBRAVA with whom I worked to create GOX.
I am also grateful to the ENSIIE engineering school in Evry, France, and all its staff for giving me the opportunity to understand SDN, graph databases and to develop GOX.
I would also like to thank the researchers behind the Gavel research paper that laid the foundation for the creation of a graph-based SDN controller. Good job! Link to Gavel
If you have any questions on GOX, how to use it, how to develop GOX applications or if you want to improve GOX, you can send me an e-mail at alex@danduran.fr