International Journal of Innovative
Computing, Information and Control
Volume 18, Number 3, June 2022c
ICIC International ⃝2022
ISSN 1349-4198
pp. 755–767

LOW-COST NETWORK CONTROL SYSTEM BASED ON
SOFTWARE-DEFINED NETWORKING OVER WORLD WIDE WEB
USING SINGLE-BOARD COMPUTER
Akihiro Imae, Osanori Koyama∗ , Ippei Tomo, Minoru Yamaguchi
Kanami Ikeda and Makoto Yamada
Graduate School of Engineering
Osaka Metropolitan University
Gakuen-cho 1-1, Naka-ku, Sakai, Osaka 599-8531, Japan{ sab01019; dd104005 }@edu.osakafu-u.ac.jp; { nf101345; kanami; myamada }@eis.osakafu-u.ac.jp∗
Corresponding author: koyama@eis.osakafu-u.ac.jp

Received December 2021; revised March 2022
Abstract. Recently, software-defined networking (SDN) is one of the network virtualization technologies that has attracted significant attention. SDN allows network devices
to be controlled centrally and flexibly, allowing for changes to configuration parameters,
packet-exchange settings, and quality of service in routing, among other things. Furthermore, SDN reduces network administrators’ network management workloads. SDNenabled network devices, on the other hand, are generally more expensive than legacy
network devices, and the total cost is a significant barrier when SDN is deployed in a
datacenter, enterprise, and small-scale networks. In this paper, from the viewpoint of thecost and network management workload, we propose a network management and control
system based on SDN for Internet protocol (IP) over the world wide web (WWW) using
low-cost single-board computers. To validate the work of the proposal system, we designed
and constructed a small-scale experimental system that mimicked a part of the proposal
system and conducted experiments by using two functions. The experiment result showedthat the proposed system worked properly. As a result, using the proposed system can significantly reduce total construction costs when compared to replacing all legacy network
devices with SDN-enabled ones. To be more specifically, the total cost of SDN-enabled
network devices multiplied by the number of devices can be reduced to the cost of a single
Raspberry Pi multiplied by the number of nodes. Furthermore, our proposal system also
contributes to reducing the management workload for network administrators and guaranteeing a certain level of security for network devices.
Keywords: Software-deﬁned networking, IP networks, Single-board computer, Raspberry Pi, OpenFlow, Ryu

1. Introduction. Recently, the amount of data ﬂowing into data centers and corporate
networks has been increasing due to the rise of new services such as social network services and cloud computing. Therefore, resource management and optimization for suchnetworks have been important [1-3]. The number of network devices in the network is
growing in response to the increase in the data ﬂow, and so is the workload on network
administrators. Furthermore, the future will necessitate the design and operation of complex networks to realize previously unimaginable services. In this context, one of the
network virtualization technologies, software-deﬁned networking (SDN), has gained traction in recent years [4-7]. In SDN, the data plane and control plane, which are integrated
into legacy network devices, are separated, and the control plane is integrated into asoftware called the controller. With this separation, network administrators can operate
DOI: 10.24507/ijicic.18.03.755
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the controller to change the conﬁguration parameters of each SDN-enabled network device, thus reducing the management workload on network administrators. Furthermore,by connecting the controller to external applications, various functions such as routing
and quality of service can be intricately controlled. With these external applications, it
is also possible to build complex, ﬂexible, and dynamic networks that were previously
unimaginable [8-10]. As a result, SDN has been actively deployed in data centers andlarge enterprise networks to take advantage of its signiﬁcant beneﬁts. To fully reap the
beneﬁts of SDN, all existing network devices must be replaced with SDN-enabled ones.
SDN-enabled network devices, on the other hand, are generally more expensive than legacy networks devices. Therefore, it is diﬃcult to replace all network devices at once fromthe point of view of the cost, which is a major barrier to SDN introduction [11,12].
Several pieces of research have been done to solve the problem of total cost caused byreplacing all devices with SDN-enabled devices at once. One solution is to adopt the ideaof hybrid SDN [13-15], where legacy network devices and SDN-enabled devices coexist
in the network. Hybrid SDN is based on the idea of gradually replacing network devices
with SDN-enabled ones, rather than replacing all network devices at once. The gradualreplacement approach solves the cost problem, but it does not allow you to fully beneﬁt
from SDN’s reduced management workload. As a result, to replace all network devices atonce with SDN-enabled ones while lowering costs, a study using inexpensive single-board
computers as SDN-enabled Ethernet switches was conducted [16-19]. Due to the use of
low-cost single-board computers as switches, switching performance was low and limited touse in low-speed networks. Therefore, the solution cannot be used in a high-speed network
such as the gigabit-speed network. On the other hand, research has been conducted on
how to update legacy network devices to SDN-enabled network equipment to use highperformance server equipment [20,21] and to use high-performance virtual switches [22].
The data plane in SDN was newly implemented in a high-performance server or virtual
switch in these studies, and the legacy network device was updated by linking with them.
Aside from the development costs, such as program implementation, it is diﬃcult to apply
them to a gigabit-speed network because the server or virtual switch is responsible fordata transfer. If used, it necessitates the use of a very high-performance server or virtual
switch, which raises the overall system construction cost. From this background, we haveresearched how to introduce a cost-eﬀective SDN system that utilized legacy network
devices by newly adding inexpensive single-board computers into the existing network[23-27]. In our previous research, we have proposed a system that has an inexpensive
single-board computer for a legacy network device in order to make it SDN-enabled. In
addition, we have proposed applications that work together with a controller and a new
function that notiﬁes the controller of network information using packet-in message. In the
research, important points are only adding a single-board computer for a legacy network
device and translating SDN control commands into vendor-speciﬁc control commands inthe single-board computers.
In this paper, we propose a system that is more cost eﬀective than our previous proposed system to realize SDN deployment at a low cost. Surprisingly, the translation ofcontrol commands by a single-board computer at each node has the advantage of preventing unencrypted packets from ﬂowing over the IP network. Furthermore, by introducing
a web server to make the controller interface (IF) web-based, we reduce the management
workload on the network administrator in our proposal system. Furthermore, by incorporating a database, we have realized a function to visualize network device conﬁgurationand parameters on the controller interface. The proposal system not only signiﬁcantly
reduces the cost of implementing SDN, but it also allows the use of the network classINT. J. INNOV. COMPUT. INF. CONTROL, VOL.18, NO.3, 2022

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used before the SDN update. The high functionality of the system allows network administrators to change the conﬁguration parameters of network devices and refer to theinformation of the network device from anywhere in the network via the world wide web(WWW), independent of where the controller is implemented.
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the proposed system. In Section 3, we describe the results of verifying the operation of the proposed system on an
experimental network. Finally, the conclusions of this paper are given.
2. Cost-Eﬀective Network Control System.
2.1. Proposal method. Figure 1 shows the methods used in the proposal system in thispaper. In Figure 1, the desired control commands are delivered from the SDN controller tothe single-board computer using OpenFlow [28-31] (OF) which is SDN protocol. In otherwords, the control commands sent by the OpenFlow controller are received as OpenFlow
messages by the OpenFlow switch in the single-board computer, and after reading theinformation in the OpenFlow message, they are translated into vendor-speciﬁc control
commands and sent to the single-board computer via vendor-speciﬁc protocols such as
Telnet and secure shell (SSH). The legacy network device is conﬁgured in response to thecontrol commands that are sent to it. Furthermore, it is critical to note that a singleboard computer can translate control commands for multiple legacy network devices. In
other words, in Figure 1, there are many OpenFlow connections between the OpenFlow
controller and the OpenFlow switch. The number of connections equals the number oflegacy network devices, and each connection can be used to identify the desired legacy
network device. As a result, we can control many network devices with a single-board
computer, which is less expensive than the proposed system in our previous study [23-27].

Figure 1. Method of translating control commands
The translation mechanism in which SDN control commands are translated into vendorspeciﬁc control commands is very simple. Setting values in legacy network device such as
port number, static routing table, and virtual local area network (VLAN) number are set
to parameters in OpenFlow-Mod message. The parameters are included in the ﬁelds ofheader, match, and action of the OpenFlow-Mod message. The OpenFlow message is received by OpenFlow switch in the single-board computer. The single-board computer
has a dictionary that includes one-to-one correspondences between the parameter in
OpenFlow-Mod message and vendor-speciﬁc control command. We have developed thedictionary in previous researches [23-27]. If the type of the received message is OpenFlowMod, the parameters in OpenFlow-Mod message are changed to vendor-speciﬁc control
commands corresponding one-to-one with them using the dictionary. Finally, the vendorspeciﬁc control commands are sent by vendor-speciﬁc communication protocol.

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2.2. Overview of the proposal system. Figure 2 shows an overview of the proposal
system. The proposal system can be divided into three layers for each main function.
In Figure 2, we adopt the method described in Figure 1. Furthermore, the controller
establishes SDN connections with SDN-enabled network devices as well as single-board
computers. Furthermore, various applications can be linked to the controller, allowing for
ﬂexible network construction and operation. In the proposal system, for example, webservers and databases are used as applications. As a result, the network administrator’suser interface (UI) is the web pages provided by the web server rather than the controller.
In addition to storing the settings information of network devices in the database andvisualizing them, the UI is improved by implementing a language switching function(Japanese or English) on the web page to reduce the management workload of network
administrators.

Figure 2. Overview of the proposal system
2.3. Conﬁguration of the proposal system. Figure 3 shows a conﬁguration of the
proposed system in this paper. In the proposal system, there are Node-1 to Node-N, andeach node is connected by Internet protocol (IP). In Node-1, there is a control server
and a Raspberry Pi [32], one of the single-board computers, and the number of SDN
connections established is equal to the number of legacy network devises in the node. In
addition, the method in Figure 1 is used to update the legacy network devices in Node-1
to support SDN. Only the Raspberry Pi is present from Node-2 to Node-N, and it hasestablished connections with the controller in Node-1. Similarly, the Raspberry Pi in eachnode updates the legacy network devices to support SDN. In Figure 3, the manager PC isalso in Node-1, but it could be in any other node. In other words, the controller of Node-1
can be used from any other node via the web, which greatly contributes to reducing themanagement workload on network administrators.
2.4. Functional components and processing ﬂow. Figure 4 shows the conﬁgurationof functional components and the operation ﬂow at Node-1 in the proposal system shownin Figure 3. The network administrator uses the manager PC running a web browser tochange the settings of the legacy network devices from Layer-1 to Layer-3 in the open systems interconnection reference model and to refer to the current conﬁguration informationof the network devices. First, the network administrator selects the desired device fromthe legacy network devices to be managed, then selects the desired conﬁguration items,
which are the functions on the device from Layer-1 to Layer-3, enters the parameters, andINT. J. INNOV. COMPUT. INF. CONTROL, VOL.18, NO.3, 2022

759

Figure 3. Proposal system

Figure 4. Functional components and processing ﬂow
sends them. Alternatively, once a device has been selected by the network administrator,
a control command referring to the device’s conﬁguration information can be sent. Next,
the sent control command is received by the web server in the control server throughthe transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP)-IF, and if it is a control
command to change the device settings, it is passed to the OpenFlow controller after
updating the database, and if it is the control command to refer the device conﬁguration
information, the information is retrieved from the database and is sent back. Following
that, the OpenFlow controller uses the received control commands to identify the OpenFlow connection to be used and sends the control commands as an OpenFlow message.
The OpenFlow message sent is received by the OpenFlow switch in the Raspberry Pi
that has established the OpenFlow connection, and the control commands are translated
through the adapter and sent to the device using the vendor-speciﬁc protocol. In this paper, we adopt Telnet which has long been used as the vendor-speciﬁc protocol. Telnet is

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a communication protocol used in IP networks to control remote servers and routers andswitches from a terminal generally. Because all communication in Telnet is unencrypted,
sending packets over the IP network is risky; however, in our proposed system, packets
ﬂowing over the IP network are limited to encrypted packets such as OpenFlow packets.
Because unencrypted packets, such as Telnet packets, can only travel within each node,
the network can be run relatively safely.
3. Experimental Demonstration. To verify the work of the proposal system, we built
a small-scale experimental system that mimics Node-1 in Figure 3. In the experimental
system, the two functions were executed three times each on two legacy layer-3 switches(L3SW) and the work was veriﬁed by observing the receiving throughput of the routertester. Furthermore, Wireshark [33], one of the packet capture tools, was used in theexperimental system to capture packets before and after the execution of the two functions.
As a result, the proposed system’s correct operation was conﬁrmed further by capturing
major packets such as OpenFlow packets.
3.1. Experimental setup. Figure 5 shows the experimental setup. Two L3SWs, a routertester, a manager PC, a control server, a Raspberry Pi, and an analyzer for packet capture
were located as shown in Figures 3 and 4. The router tester kept 0.9 Gbps traﬃc ﬂowing
through the two L3SWs. The traﬃc was received on three ports, Rx1 through Rx3.
In other words, three IP addresses (192.168.23.2, 192.168.24.2, and 192.168.30.2) wereassigned to the receiving ports of the router tester, and 0.3 Gbps traﬃc destined for each
IP address was continuously ﬂowing. As a default setting, L3SW1 was not conﬁgured
with a static routing table for Rx1, Rx2, and Rx3, but L3SW2 was conﬁgured to route
correctly, including the IP interface settings. The IP interface settings referred to the
IP address assigned to the network device’s virtual local area network (VLAN), and the
VLAN was conﬁgured with the ports that participate in that VLAN. In other words,
L3SW2 had three VLANs and their respective IP interfaces conﬁgured on a single portthat was used as the sending port for routing packets to Rx1, Rx2, and Rx3. As the resultof initial settings, the receiving throughput of the router tester by default was 0 Gbps.

Figure 5. Experimental setup

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3.2. User interface. Figure 6 shows the UI used by the network administrator. Figure6(a) shows the transition of the UI when accessing the web server from a web browser
and selecting L3SW2 from the list of managed devices. The left side of the ﬁnal UI by thetransition of the web page shows the setting list referring to the database. On the rightside, there are boxes for entering parameters for executing some functions from Layer-1
to Layer-3, and after entering parameters in each function and clicking the send button,
control commands can be sent to the web server and the database can be updated. In
Figures 6(b) and 6(c), the left side shows the UI of referring to the database of IP Interfacein L3SW2 of the initial conﬁguration and after the experiment, respectively, and the rightside shows the UI of referring to the database of static routing table in L3SW1.

(a) User interface on web browser in manager PC(b) Database reference in initial settings(c) Database reference after executing functions

Figure 6. User interface

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3.3. Experimental procedure.
3.3.1. System verification with increasing IP-throughputs. As shown in Figure 5, static
entries were added to the routing table in L3SW1. Router tester had three destinations,and the three destinations were conﬁgured one by one so that traﬃc could ﬂow to each
destination. In other words, after the initial settings, the manager PC sent the control
command to add the static routing table three times. When the control command wascorrectly sent to L3SW1 according to the processing ﬂow depicted in Figure 4, the routertester’s receiving throughput increased by about 0.3 Gbps for each sending control command. Therefore, it was possible to verify the work of the proposal system by observing
the receiving throughput of the router tester and seeing the change.
3.3.2. System verification with decreasing IP-throughputs. After completing the addition
static entries of the routing table in 3.3.1, the IP interfaces of L3SW2 were removed asshown in Figure 5. In other words, the three IP interfaces initially set in L3SW2 were
removed in order by operating the manager PC. When the control command is correctlysent to L3SW2 according to the processing ﬂow shown in Figure 4, the router tester’sreceiving throughput drops by about 0.3 Gbps for each sending control command until itreaches 0 Gbps. Therefore, it was possible to verify the work of the proposal system fromthe change of the throughput as well as 3.3.1.
3.3.3. System verification with packet analysis. As shown in Figure 5, packet capture
was performed using LAN analyzer. We set the port mirroring function for the ports
connected to the management PC, control server, and Raspberry Pi in layer-3 switch
2, and all packets are mirrored from each device to the layer-3 switch on the analyzer.
Wireshark, one of the packet capture tools, was used to capture the major packets inthe experiment. In other words, a total of six OpenFlow packets were observed in theexperiments of 3.3.1 and 3.3.2 and the capture of these packets conﬁrmed the correct workof the proposed system.
3.4. Results of experimental demonstration. Figure 7(a) shows the observed changes
in the receiving throughput in the router tester, and Figure 7(b) shows the results of packet
capture. In Figure 7(a), the receiving throughput increases three times at approximately
300 Mbps, and then decreases three times at approximately 300 Mbps before reaching 0bps. This result indicates that the addition of the static routing table and deletion of the
IP interface described in Sections 3.3.1 and 3.3.2 were carried out correctly. Furthermore,in Figure 7(b), OpenFlow packets are correctly captured six times, described in Section
3.3.3, and changes in receiving throughput begin with the observation of OpenFlow packets within a few seconds of each other. Therefore, two results conﬁrm that the proposedsystem was working properly.
Next, we explain how much the proposed system can reduce the cost compared toreplacing all the legacy network devices with SDN-enabled network devices. Table 1 shows
the price of the SDN-enabled white-box switch in 2020 and the prices of the Raspberry
Pi and control server used in the proposal system and software. As shown in Table 1,
depending on performance, SDN-enabled network device costs about $2,900-$3,900 [21]and replacing all the legacy network devices with SDN-enabled ones will require a hugecost. The price of a Raspberry Pi, on the other hand, is around $33.9 [34] and Raspberry Pi
in the proposed method only requires the number of nodes in the network, so the network
construction cost is low. Furthermore, operating system (OS) for the Raspberry Pi and
OpenFlow switch are both free software. The control server is also a general-purpose,
low-cost one, and both the operating system and the Ryu [35] used as the SDN controller

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763(a) Receiving throughput change of router tester(b) Packet analysis

Figure 7. Results of experiments
Table 1. Comparison of cost
Reference [21]Proposal System
Control server
SDN-enabled
Raspberry Pi 3
• Ryu
(HP Elite Desk
white-box switch
Model B+
Hardware,705 G3 SFF) (OF Controller)
Software/OS• Open vSwitch
24 ports 40 ports Raspbian 10
CentOS 7.9(OF Switch)
10 Gbps 10 Gbps
(Free)(Free)
Cost$2,900 $3,900
$33.9
$590
Free
are free software. For these reasons, the proposed system can realize the deployment of
SDN at a low cost.
Finally, we explain how much the proposed system in this research can reduce the costcompared to our previous system [23-27]. In the previous system, the number of Raspberry
Pi required is the same as the number of legacy network devices. However, in the proposed

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system, the number of Raspberry Pi is the same as the number of network nodes. In
general, dozens or hundreds of the legacy network devices are included in a network node.
It is possible to reduce the number of Raspberry Pi as single-board computer. Therefore,
the proposed system can signiﬁcantly reduce the system construction cost compared toour previous system.
4. Conclusions. In this paper, we proposed a system that added new single-board computers as a low-cost method to achieve centralized management by SDN. When compared
to replacing all legacy network devices with SDN-enabled ones, the cost could be signiﬁcantly reduced. The central idea is to use single-board computers to translate SDN control
commands into vendor-speciﬁc control commands. Furthermore, this translation function
can provide some level of security for network devices that only support non-encrypted
communication protocols like Telnet. In addition, linking the SDN controller with external
applications can achieve high functionality and contribute to reducing the management
workload for network administrators. In this study, we adopted a web server and a database for advanced functionality to remove the management restriction based on the implemented location of the SDN controller, and by storing the conﬁguration informationof network devices in the database, the administrator could refer to it at any time. We
also created an experimental network that mimicked a portion of the proposal system andtested its functionality. As a result of the receiving throughput change of the router testerand packet capture, the proposal system was found to be operationally sound. However,the number of network devices that a single Raspberry Pi can manage has yet to bevalidated and the controller and single-board computer are the single point of failure ineach other. In the future, the number of network devices that can be managed by one
single-board computer will be investigated and the single point of failure in the proposedsystem will be overcome.
Acknowledgment. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 16K06306.
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Author Biography
Akihiro Imae received B.E. degree from Osaka Prefecture University, Japan, in
2020. Currently he is a master’s student of engineering at Osaka Prefecture University. His main research interests include Web-based network control and management
based on software deﬁned networking using single-board computer.

Osanori Koyama received B.E., M.E. and Ph.D. degrees from Osaka Prefecture
University, Japan, in 1999, 2001 and 2013, respectively. Currently he works at Photonic Innovative Systems Research Group as associate professor in Osaka Metropolitan University. His research interests include design and control issues related to
optical IP networks based on software deﬁned networking, and optical ﬁber sensing
system over IP network.

Ippei Tomo received B.E. degree from Osaka Prefecture University, Japan, in
2021. Currently he is a research member of Photonic Innovative Systems ResearchGroup in Osaka Metropolitan University. His interests include software development
for wavelength path management in IP over AWG-STAR network.

Minoru Yamaguchi received B.E. and M.E. degrees from Osaka Prefecture University, Japan, in 2014 and 2016, respectively. He is currently enrolled in Ph.D.
program in engineering at Osaka Prefecture University. His research interests include computation and control methods for wavelength path management in IP over
AWG-STAR network.

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Kanami Ikeda is assistant professor of the Department of Electrical & Electronic Systems, Osaka Metropolitan University, Japan. She received Ph.D. degree inengineering from the University of Electro-Communications, Japan, in 2018. Her research interests include optical communications and networking, optical information
processing, and optical sensing. She is a member of Optica.

Makoto Yamada is professor of the Department of Electrical & Electronic
Systems, Osaka Metropolitan University, Japan. He received B.E. and M.E. degrees
in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Nagaoka, Niigata, Japan
in 1983 and 1985, respectively. He joined NTT Laboratories in 1985, where he wasengaged in research on planar lightwave circuits. Since 1989, he has been engaged
in research on optical ﬁber ampliﬁers. In 1999, he received D.E. degree in the areaof optical ampliﬁers. He joined Osaka Prefecture University in 2008, and has been
the professor since 2013. His research interests include design & control for opticalampliﬁers and other components in optical networks.
Prof. Yamada is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE), a Senior Member of the Institute of Electronics, Information
and Communication Engineers of Japan (IEICE), a Member of Japan Society ofApplied Physics, and a Fellow of the Optical Society (OSA).
Prof. Yamada received the Paper Award (1994) from the IEICE, the Electronics
Letters Premium (1997) from the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and the Sakurai
Prize (1998) and Meritorious Award of the 40th foundation anniversary (2021) fromthe Optoelectronics Industry and Technology Development Association (OITDA).