NetIDE · An integrated development environment for portable network applications

While most of programmable network gear vendors support OpenFlow nowadays, a number of fragmented control plane solutions exist for proprietary software-defined networks. Thus, network applications developers need to re-code their solutions every time they target a network infrastructure based on a different controller. Moreover, different network developers adopt different solutions as abstract control plane programming language (e.g. Frenetic, Procera), leading to network programs that are neither reusable nor shareable. So, despite OpenFlow being the candidate for a standard interface between the controller and the network infrastructure, interworking between different controllers and network devices is hindered and walled gardens are emerging. NetIDE will deliver a single integrated development environment to support the whole development lifecycle of network controller programs in a vendor-independent fashion.NetIDE will approach the problem by proposing an architecture that will allow the different representations to be used to program the network and different controllers to execute the network programs. In particular, NetIDE will define an abstraction mechanism that allows implementing Network Applications for a controller of choice and deploying and running them on top of other controllers supporting different programming languages and APIs.. Around it, we will explore fundamental research topics, such as: development and composition of controller agnostic Network Apps (applications that control network behavior) and Network Services (services that support the task of network controllers); cross-controller debugging and profiling of network programs; heterogeneous network programming; network programming with simulators in the loop. The NetIDE architecture will include a developer toolkit to allow creation of Network Apps, and a Network App Engine supporting the execution and testing of these Network Apps. NetIDE will result in one-stop solution for the development of SDN applications that covers the whole development lifecycle.