Manual:OpenFlow

Overview

This page contains information on OpenFlow switch support in RouterOS.

For information about OpenFlow see https://www.opennetworking.org/standards/intro-to-openflow.

Currently RouterOS implements OpenFlow version 1.0.0 required features. Support for newer versions, optional features and switching hardware acceleration are to be added. Current implementation should be considered experimental - NOT production ready and is available for evaluation purposes. Please contact support with feature requests and bug reports.

OpenFlow support is available as standalone openflow package.

OpenFlow feature overrides regular packet processing functionality - packets that are received on interfaces that are OpenFlow switch ports, will not pass through the regular networking stack unless OpenFlow controller sets up flows that enable this. Due to this care must be taken to not disable access to device when configuring OpenFlow.

Currently only unencrypted TCP is available as communications channel between RouterOS OpenFlow switch and controller.

Configuration

RouterOS supports multiple OpenFlow switch instances, each of which can have separate controller(s) and sets of ports.

Switch instance can be added using command:

[admin@MikroTik] > /openflow add name=ofswitch1 controllers=10.0.0.18

Switch ports can be added using command:

[admin@MikroTik] > /openflow port add switch=ofswitch1 interface=ether2
[admin@MikroTik] > /openflow port add switch=ofswitch1 interface=ether2