SDN Floodlight Controller GUI Topology Video and Install

SDN Floodlight Controller GUI Topology Video and Install

Posted Jul 8 2012 by Brent Salisbury in  with 4 Comments

Network


SDN Floodlight Controller GUI Topology Video and Install: There is a new topology component to the OpenFlow Controller FloodLight. The page is located in the GUI Web UI under the “Topology” menu and the balls on the screen represent hosts. I haven’t checked the listserv to see where they are going with it but it’s all in the right direction and actually reminds me of the OpenStack dev history video made with Gource the visualization software. The OpenStack video is the future of computing and network SDN resource visualization if done in realtime and made useful. Replace developer with Tenant and you have some sparkle. Pretty “Minority Report”esque but it wouldn’t be the first time Science Fiction predicted the future.

Floodlight-UI

Figure 1. Screen Shot of the Web UI Topology Page.

Video 1. FloodLight Topology Web UI Module. Neat first step.

Video 2.It would be slick to visualize out networks like this. Useful not sure but certainly slick.

If you have not installed FloodLight before it is super quick and easy. You will not get any visual hosts until you have a switch attached to it. You can do that very easily with a quick lab here or a longer more in depth lab here.

System Preperation

Install dependencies, apt-get for UB and yum for RH:
$apt-get install build-essential default-jdk ant python-dev eclipse git

SDN Floodlight Controller GUI Install

Clone the Github project and build the jar and start the controller:

$git clone git://github.com/floodlight/floodlight.git
$cd floodlight
$ant
$java -jar target/floodlight.jar

Once the service is running you can go to the web GUI and view topologies, flows etc or use curl statements to add remove datapaths.
View the GUI in a web browser http://localhost:8080/ui/index.html

Thanks for stopping by.

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About the Author

Brent SalisburyI have over 20 years of experience wearing various hats from, network engineer, architect, ops and software engineer. More at Brent's LinkedInView all posts by Brent Salisbury →

  1. longbin chenlongbin chen05-25-2013


    Hi, Brent

    I follow these steps:
    $git clone git://github.com/floodlight/floodlight.git
    $cd floodlight
    $ant
    $java -jar target/floodlight.jar
    But could not open the ui in browser. Is there any step I missed? Thank you!

  2. Brent SalisburyBrent Salisbury05-25-2013


    Hey Longbin, try getting a socket first w/ “telnet 8080″

    Also you need to add the directories to the URI.

    http://:8080/ui/index.html
    or on the controller
    http://127.0.0.1:8080/ui/index.html

    If neither work, I can give it a quick test.

    Regards,
    -Brent

  3. Anu MAnu M10-25-2013


    Hi Brent,

    I am running the controller in a remote host and do not have access to the OS GUI. Is there a way to see the switch details as in “http://localhost:8080/ui/index.html”, using a command from the command-line?

    Thank you,
    Anu