The POX controller

The final section of Chapter 1, Review of TCP/IP Protocol Suite and Python Language, introduce to you another Python-based OpenFlow controller, POX. When OpenFlow was originally developed at Stanford, the original controller was NOX, written in Java. As an easier-to-learn alternative to NOX, POX was created. I personally used POX to learn OpenFlow a few years ago and thought it was an excellent learning tool. However, as time has passed, the development of POX seems to have slowed down a bit. For example, currently there is no active effort for Python 3. More importantly, officially, POX supports OpenFlow 1.0 and a number of Nicira extensions and has partial support for OpenFlow 1.1. Therefore, I have picked Ryu as the OpenFlow controller for this book. POX remains a viable alternative, however, for Python-based controllers if you are only working with OpenFlow 1.0.

Note

You can learn more about POX on https://openflow.stanford.edu/display/ONL/POX+Wiki.

Launching any of the...