Software-defined networking (SDN) is an approach to computer networking that allows network administrators to manage network services through abstraction of higher-level functionality.
Wiki : Software-Defined Networking
Network Operating System
Beluganos - Beluganos is a new network OS designed for white-box switches (OF-DPA), which can apply large-scale networks.
Cumulus Linux - Cumulus Linux is a powerful open network operating system that allows you to automate, customize and scale using web-scale principles like the world's largest data centers.
FlexSwitch - The first open source network protocol suite offering complete layer2/layer3 functionality for accelerating development and deployment of whitebox networking gear
Mion - A switch OS based on ONLP API and Yocto project.
OcNOS - Extensive switching and routing protocol support with advanced capabilities such as MPLS and SDN
Open Network Linux, ONL - A Linux distribution for "bare metal" switches, that is, network forwarding devices built from commodity components.
OpenSwitch - A linux network operating system from Dell EMC.
OpenWrt - Is a Linux Operating System targeting embedded devices.
PicOS - A SDN OS for white box switches Layer-2/3 feature set with support for OpenFlow, OVSDB, and other protocols.
SONiC - Software for Open Networking in the Cloud SONiC
Stratum - An open source, silicon-independent switch operating system for software-defined networks
Install Environment
ONIE - ONIE enables a bare metal network switch ecosystem where end users have a choice among different network operating systems.
Software Switch
BESS - Berkeley Extensible Software Switch, BESS is a modular framework for software switches.
bmv2- A P4 software switch which is usually used as a tool to verify the funtions the developers describe in P4 language.
CPqD- An OpenFlow 1.3 compatible user-space software switch implementation
FD.IO - Relentlessly focused on data IO speed and efficiency for more flexible and scalable networks and storage
Indigo - Indigo is an open source project aimed at enabling support for OpenFlow on physical and hypervisor switches.
Lagopus - A high-performance software OpenFlow 1.3 switch.
LINC-Switch - A pure OpenFlow software switch written in Erlang
Open vSwitch - Open vSwitch is a production quality, multilayer virtual switch.
PISCES - A Programmable, Protocol-Independent Software Switch.
snabbswitch - An open source virtualized Ethernet networking stack.
ZeroTier - ZeroTier is a software-based managed Ethernet switch for planet Earth.
Network Virtualization
FlowVisor - An OpenFlow controller that acts as a hypervisor/proxy between a switch and multiple controllers. Can slice multiple switches in parallel, effectively slicing a network.
OpenVirtex - A network hypervisor that can create multiple virtual and programmable networks on top of a single physical infrastructure.
Protocol
OpenFlow - A communications protocol that gives access to the forwarding plane of a network switch or router over the network.
OF-Config - OpenFlow Management and Configuration Protocol
OVSDB - A communication protocol which used to manage the OpenvSwitch database.
Beehive Network Controller - A distributed SDN controller built on top of Beehive. It supports OpenFlow but can be easily extended for other southbound protocols.
Open MUL - A lightweight SDN/Openflow controller written almost entirely in C from scratch.
Open Security Controller - Software-defined security orchestration solution that automates deployment of virtualized network security functions, like next-generation firewall, intrusion prevention systems and application data controllers
OpenContrail - A SDN project that utilizes SDN & NFV and provides all the necessary components for network virtualization.
POX - An open source development platform for Python-based software-defined networking (SDN) control applications.
Ravel - A software-defined networking (SDN) controller that uses a standard SQL database to represent the network.
Ryu - A component-based software defined networking framework.
Trema - A full-stack, easy-to-use framework for developing OpenFlow controllers in Ruby and C.
Vyatta - The first commercial Controller built directly from OpenDaylight.
Simulator/Emulator
Containernet - Mininet fork that allows to use Docker containers as hosts in emulated networks
EstiNet - A world-renowned software tool for network planning
MaxiNet - MaxiNet extends the famous Mininet emulation environment to span the emulation across several physical machines. This allows to emulate very large software-defined networks.
Mininet - An Instant Virtual Network on your Laptop (or other PC)
ns-3 - A discrete-event network simulator that supports OpenFlow environment.
OpenNet - A simulator for software-defined wireless local area network
Tinynet - A lightweight instant virtual network for rapid prototyping SDN
Language
Frenetic - The Frenetic Programming Language and Runtime System
NEMO - A domain specific language (DSL) based on abstraction of network models and conclusion of operation patterns.
P4 - A declarative language for expressing how packets are processed by the pipeline of a network forwarding element such as a switch, NIC, router or network function appliance.
bgp4r - BGP4R is a ruby library which enables the creation and manipulation of BGP messages. In BGP4R, all well-known BGP constructs are defined in classes.
Bird - The BIRD project aims to develop a fully functional dynamic IP routing daemon primarily targeted on (but not limited to) Linux, FreeBSD and other UNIX-like systems and distributed under the GNU General Public License.
FRRouting - An IP routing protocol suite for Linux and Unix platforms which includes protocol daemons for BGP4, BGP4+, OSPFv2, OSPFv3, RIPv1, RIPv2, RIPng, PIM-SM/MSDP and LDP as well as very early support for IS-IS, EIGRP and NHRP.
gobgp - GoBGP is an open source BGP implementation designed from scratch for modern environment and implemented in a modern programming language, the Go Programming Language.
Quagga - Quagga is a routing software suite, providing implementations of OSPFv2, OSPFv3, RIP v1 and v2, RIPng and BGP-4 for Unix platforms, particularly FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris and NetBSD. Quagga is a fork of GNU Zebra which was developed by Kunihiro Ishiguro.
yabgp - YABGP is a yet another Python implementation for BGP Protocol. It can be used to establish BGP connections with all kinds of routers (include real Cisco/HuaWei/Juniper routers and some router simulators like GNS3) and receive/parse BGP messages for future analysis.
Misc
Aether Project - the first open source Enterprise 5G/LTE Edge-Cloud-as-a-Service platform (ECaaS).
Mininet Spear Narmox - A online web service provides a visualization of Mininet Topology
Open Network Automation Platform, ONAP - Alignment of the two projects creates a harmonized and comprehensive framework for real-time, policy-driven software automation of virtual network functions that will enable software, network, IT and cloud providers and developers to rapidly create new services.
ASAP2 - The ASAP2 accelerator is built on top of eSwitch NIC hardware, and allows either the entire virtual switch, or significant portions of virtual switch or distributed virtual router (DVR) operations to be offloaded to the Mellanox NIC
DPDK - DPDK is a set of libraries and drivers for fast packet processing.
RDMA - Remote direct memory access (RDMA) is a direct memory access from the memory of one computer into that of another without involving either one's operating system. This permits high-throughput, low-latency networking
XDP - XDP or eXpress Data Path provides a high performance, programmable network data path in the Linux kernel as part of the IO Visor Project.
It is designed to run on any processors. The first supported CPU was Intel x86 and it is now extended to IBM POWER and ARM.
Userspace Network Stack
drv-netif-dpdk - drv-netif-dpdk is a DPDK network interface for rump kernels. The combined result is a userspace TCP/IP stack doing packet I/O via DPDK.
f-stack - F-Stack is an user space network development kit with high performance based on DPDK, FreeBSD TCP/IP stack and coroutine API.
mTCP - mTCP is a highly scalable user-level TCP stack for multicore systems. mTCP source code is distributed under the Modified BSD License. For more detail, please refer to the LICENSE. The license term of io_engine driver and ported applications may differ from the mTCP’s.
net-next-nuse - Network Stack in Userspace (NUSE) NUSE allows us to use Linux network stack as a library which any applications can directory use by linking the library. Each application has its own network stack so, it provides an instant virtualized environment apart from a host operating system.
nff-go - NFF-Go becomes part of DPDK project umbrella under Linux Foundation! Mirror repo can be found here: http://dpdk.org/browse/apps/nff-go/. We will accept patches through DPDK mail-list and standard DPDK contribution process too.
Analytics
Apache Spot - Community-driven cybersecurity project, built from the ground up, to bring advanced analytics to all IT Telemetry data on an open, scalable platform
PNDA - The scalable, open source big data analytics platform for networks and services.
SNAS - Streaming Network Analytics System (project SNAS) is a framework to collect, track and access tens of millions of routing objects (routers, peers, prefixes) in real time.