Example Setup

Typically, it is a good practice to have the OpenFlow part of the switch use a different VLAN than the non-OpenFlow part of the switch. With most switches, you can create a VLAN that covers the ports you intend to use for OpenFlow and associate that with an OpenFlow instance. This insures that the broadcast is restricted to those ports and does not affect the non- OpenFlow part. Furthermore, it is possible to create different instances of OpenFlow within a switch, with each instance controlled by a different controller.

Following figure illustrate one possible way of creating the OpenFlow instances and have it co-exist with non-OpenFlow traffic (e.g., VLAN10). In this example, the network has two OpenFlow instances, of which VLAN120 is reachable from outside the network, while VLAN110 is internal. VLAN120 traffic reaches the rest of the Internet through the trunk link on port A8. VLAN 999 is being used for the management uplink of all switches over the non-OpenFlow network.