This report provides the state of the art concerning technologies and important aspects related to hardware abstraction models. The ALIEN project aims at delivering innovative network abstraction layer to connect non-OpenFlow capable equipment to OpenFlow environment, therefore all issues relevant to hardware abstraction mechanism should be considered. The report starts with short description of the main ideas of Software Defined Networking (SDN), where the OpenFlow protocol is used. This is the “hot topic” regarding modern and future communication networks. Next, issues related to hardware abstraction layer and the most important network and protocol description languages related to the goal of the ALIEN project are presented. To hide the complexity of underlying hardware it is possible to use intermediate representation languages and platforms described in this deliverable. The issues related to network virtualization as well as selected aspects of security in SDN are also discussed. To show the practical implementation of the OpenFlow environment the first OpenFlow based experimental facility at Europe is depicted in the report. The network was created within OFELIA collaborative project and allows researchers not only to experiment by using the network but to control the network itself.
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