NOX Manual

Introduction

This document provides installation, use, and development instructions for NOX v0.3.0.

NOX is a network control platform. [1] Its purpose is to provide a high-level, programmatic interface on top of which network management and control applications can be built. NOX is different from standard network development environments (such as building routers within or on top of Linux) in that it provides a centralized programming model for an entire network.

NOX applications have flow-level control of the network. This means that they can determine which flows are allowed on the network and the path they take. In addition, NOX provides applications with an abstracted view of the network resources, including the network topology and the location of all detected hosts.

NOX is designed to support both large enterprise networks of hundreds of switches (supporting many thousands of hosts) and home networks with a single switch running on a low-performance embedded platform.

The primary goals of NOX are:

• To provide a platform which allows developers to innovate within home or enterprise networks using real networking hardware. Developers on NOX can control all connectivity on the network including forwarding, routing, which hosts and users are allowed etc. In addition, NOX can interpose on any flow.
• To provide usable network software for operators. The current release includes central managament for all switches on a network, admission control at the user and host level, and a full policy engine.

NOX controls the network switches through the OpenFlow protocol (http://www.openflowswitch.org). Therefore it requires at least one switch on the network to support OpenFlow. However, NOX is able to support networks composed of OpenFlow switches interconnected with traditional L2 switches and L3 routers.

For a more detailed description of NOX, see the The What and HOW of NOX.

This version of NOX is a developers’ release. Applications can be written in either C++ or Python. NOX provides a high-level API to OpenFlow as well as to other network controls functions (see Application Development by Example). While intended primarily for developers, this release does contain a full policy engine for declaring network access controls which can be used to manage a network.

Warning

Unfortunately the current documentation lags significantly behind development. While this manual should be helpful in getting the system up and running, it currently does not provide adequate coverage of the internals.

Contents:

• The What and HOW of NOX
  • What?
  • How?

• NOX Installation
  • Quick Start From Git
  • Not So Quick Start

• Setting Up a Virtual Testing Environment
  • Quickstart
  • Detailed Setup Instructions
  • Exploring NOX and openflow

• Using NOX
  • Introduction
  • Overview
  • Setting up a NOX Network
  • Running NOX

• Application Development by Example
  • Overview
  • Creating new NOX application

• NOX Core API
  • Basic Concepts
  • C++
  • Python

• Application Index
  • Discovery
  • Topology
  • Authenticator
  • Routing
  • SEPL

• NOX Box
  • Overview
  • Quick Start
  • NOX Box Basics
  • Configuration
  • Inside the NOX Box
  • Hacking on the NOX Box
  • Preparing the Compact Flash Card
  • Hardware Guide
  • References

Footnotes

[1]	NOX is a follow-on to Ethane (http://yuba.stanford.edu/ethane). NOX is currently being developed by Nicira Networks as part of a larger effort to do government trials of the Ethane network architecture.