NOX OpenFlow Controller Install on Ubuntu 12.04

Screencast w/o audio. I think it’s quick and self explanatory.

This is an install for the newer NOX release on Ubuntu 12.04. I believe the branch name is ‘verity’. It was just upped a couple weeks ago to Github with the new repo linked from noxrepo.org. It isn’t fully released but the site said Q1 2012, at the least, it will be a base to work from on 12.04. Classic doesn’t seem to build without downgrading everything on Precise. The Nox “classic” build seems to have been dormant or not maintained for a while from what I can tell. It is important to have readily available Nox controllers since most of the projects are built on that controller. That said I like Floodlight a lot and the community is active with BidSwitch behind it. Nox has an amazing backing from Nicira so that is critical also.

RouteFlow has support for Nox now which is a project I am going to be in the lab on pretty heavy over the next few days to try and nail down a good native IGP -> SDN FIB exchange. It feels like a route server approach on QUAGGA which is pretty neat. I am assuming it is similar to what I expect Google did in their deployment. There is a NANOG presentation that Scott Whyte described his MPLS LSR which was QUAGGA w/LDP support. http://goo.gl/hdKC8

If we think about it, the OpenFlow classification of a stitched route through and OF network is not far off from a LSP FEC stitching through a label swapped domain. Instead of swapping labels it is injecting JSON mappings through a REST API and orchestrated from the ingress controller just like an LSR would define the FEC on entry. Ok rambling, but fascinating stuff.

Setup Nox repo for ‘nox-dependencies’ package
$ cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
$ wget http://openflowswitch.org/downloads/debian/nox.list
$ apt-get update
$ apt-get install nox-dependencies

Install dependencies:
$ apt-get install nox-dependencies
$ apt-get install libtbb-dev
$ apt-get install libboost-serialization-dev libboost-all-dev
$ git clone git://github.com/noxrepo/nox

$ ./boot.sh
$cd nox
$ mkdir build
$ cd build

Configure, make && make install
$ ../configure
$ make
$ make install

Verify install:
$ cd src
$ pwd
/home/brent/nox/build/src (Path)
$ make check
$ ./nox_core -v
$ ./nox_core -h
$ ./nox_core -i ptcp:6633
./nox_core -i ptcp:6633 routing or add a routing module