Everything about OpenFlow

🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path

1. Read the overview: OpenFlowA 5-minute orientation
2. Skim a recent paper: Advancing SDN from OpenFlow to P4: A SurveyInfluential work since 2022
3. Pick up a classic book: Network innovation through openflow and SDN : principles and designThe most-reprinted book on the subject
4. Read the landmark paper: OpenFlowCited 7,380 times
5. Go sideways: Software-defined networkingA closely related topic
6. Go sideways: Open vSwitchA closely related topic

🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)

• OpenFlow

  Nick McKeown, Tom Anderson, Hari Balakrishnan · 2008 · ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review · 7,380 citations

• A Survey on Software-Defined Network and OpenFlow: From Concept to Implementation

  Fei Hu, Qi Hao, Ke Bao · 2014 · IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials · 643 citations

• Network Innovation using OpenFlow: A Survey

  Adrian Lara, Anisha Kolasani, Byrav Ramamurthy · 2014 · IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials · 488 citations

• A roadmap for traffic engineering in SDN-OpenFlow networks

  Ian F. Akyildiz, Ahyoung Lee, Pu Wang · 2014 · Computer Networks · 464 citations

• Sensor OpenFlow: Enabling Software-Defined Wireless Sensor Networks

  Tie Luo, Hwee-Pink Tan, Tony Q. S. Quek · 2012 · IEEE Communications Letters · 421 citations

• Combining OpenFlow and sFlow for an effective and scalable anomaly detection and mitigation mechanism on SDN environments

  K. Giotis, C. Argyropoulos, G. Androulidakis · 2014 · Computer Networks · 395 citations

• Software-Defined Networking Using OpenFlow: Protocols, Applications and Architectural Design Choices

  Wolfgang Braun, Michael Menth · 2014 · Future Internet · 208 citations

• Detection and defense of DDoS attack–based on deep learning in OpenFlow ‐based SDN

  Chuanhuang Li, Yan Wu, Xiaoyong Yuan · 2018 · International Journal of Communication Systems · 184 citations

🆕 Influential since 2022

• Advancing SDN from OpenFlow to P4: A Survey

  Athanasios Liatifis, Panagiotis Sarigiannidis, Vasileios Argyriou · 2023 · ACM Computing Surveys · 122 citations

• Flowlet-level multipath routing based on graph neural network in OpenFlow-based SDN

  Binghao Yan, Qinrang Liu, JianLiang Shen · 2022 · Future Generation Computer Systems · 30 citations

• Dynamic Routing and Failure Recovery Approaches for Efficient Resource Utilization in OpenFlow-SDN: A Survey

  Babangida Isyaku, Kamalrulnizam Bin Abu Bakar, Fuad A. Ghaleb · 2022 · IEEE Access · 28 citations

• Exploring Traffic Patterns Through Network Programmability: Introducing SDNFLow, a Comprehensive OpenFlow-Based Statistics Dataset for Attack Detection

  Jorge Buzzio-García, Jaime Vergara, Santiago Ríos-Guiral · 2024 · IEEE Access · 26 citations

• An Overview of SDN Issues—A Case Study and Performance Evaluation of a Secure OpenFlow Protocol Implementation

  Hugo Riggs, Asadullah Khalid, Arif I. Sarwat · 2025 · Electronics · 24 citations

📚 Books worth reading

• Network innovation through openflow and SDN : principles and designFei Hu · 2014

Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.

🔗 Related topics

• Software-defined networking Software-defined networking (SDN) is an approach to network management that uses abstraction to enable dynamic and programmatically efficient network configurat…
• Open vSwitch Open vSwitch (OVS) is an open-source implementation of a distributed virtual multilayer switch. The main purpose of Open vSwitch is to provide a switching…
• Pica8 Pica8 is a computer networking company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. Pica8 is a provider of SDN software solutions, delivering…
• HPE Networking Hewlett Packard Enterprise Networking (abbreviated as HPE Networking) is the Networking Products division of Hewlett Packard Enterprise ("HPE"). HPE Networking…
• Open Networking Foundation The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) was a non-profit operator-led consortium. It used an open source business model aimed at promoting networking through…
• Distributed Overlay Virtual Ethernet Distributed Overlay Virtual Ethernet (DOVE) is a tunneling and virtualization technology for computer networks, created and backed by IBM. DOVE allows…
• Network function virtualization Network function virtualization (NFV) is a network architecture concept that leverages IT virtualization technologies to virtualize entire classes of network…
• SD-WAN A software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) is a wide area network (WAN) that uses software-defined networking technology, such as communicating over…