SDN Privatizer is a Software Defined Networking application that provides an alternative to the legacy Private VLAN functionality.
Private VLANs allow for host isolation within a given VLAN whilst allowing traffic to a dedicated uplink port (gateway). In addition, Private VLAN’s allow for creation of communities within a VLAN. Community members are allowed to communicate with each other.
Private VLAN’s functionality is cumbersome to administer. Another limitation is that Private VLAN’s only operate within a given VLAN, in order to setup Private VLAN’s between VLAN’s (across layer 3), it is required to configure Policy Based Routing which makes the functionality even more complex to administer.
The goal of SDN Privatizer is to simplify the administration and provisioning of host isolation and communities. SDN Privatizer utilizes OpenFlow as control plane protocol and provides isolation or forwarding between individual hosts, groups of hosts (communities) and subnets. SDN Privatizer also supports this functionality on hosts that span different subnets without requirement for Policy Based Routing.
Another great feature of SDN Privatizer is the ability to provide host isolation and forwarding between separated OpenFlow domains. A typical application for this is in a branch environment where the OpenFlow capable devices are connected to non OpenFlow capable devices. By configuring static uplinks, the SDN Privatizer application allows for connecting the OpenFLow domains to non OpenFlow networks.