Introduction to network access control via OpenDaylight

In the previous chapter, you learned how OpenDaylight's MD-SAL works. You learned how to build a basic HelloWorld application based on OpenDaylight MD-SAL and build the model using YANG. We also reviewed how to use tools to process the YANG model file of our application in which to generate multiple Java source code files.

In this chapter, we will look at building a more practical SDN application for OpenDaylight. We are going to look at OpenFlow switches again and see how we can implement an Network Access Control (NAC) solution.

NAC is one of the well-known use cases for SDN. With SDN, network access control could become easier to deploy.

Note

Note to remember: OpenDaylight is an SDN controller; it is not a data plane component and does not process packets in terms of forwarding or alternation.