Device-aware dynamic protocol adaptation in a software-defined network

1. A controller, comprising:

processing circuitry; and

memory including instructions that, when executed on the processing circuitry, cause the processing circuitry to:

receive device information from a dataflow device;

identify one or more device features supported by the dataflow device based on the received device information;

determine one or more unverified device features supported by the dataflow device based on one or more common device attributes between the dataflow device and one or more other dataflow devices;

transmit a command to the dataflow device based on the identified device features and determined unverified device features; and

in response to receiving a response to the command from the dataflow device, update the supported device features contained in a support features database for the dataflow device.

2. The controller of claim 1 , wherein the device information received from the dataflow device includes at least one of a device model and a firmware version.

3. The controller of claim 2 , wherein the instructions further cause the processing circuitry to retrieve supported device feature information from a database based on the at least one of the device model and the firmware version.

4. The controller of claim 3 , wherein the retrieved supported device feature information includes a list of supported commands in an SDN protocol.

5. The controller of claim 1 , wherein the command transmitted to the dataflow device is in an SDN protocol.

6. The controller of claim 1 , wherein the response to the command includes a rejection and a reason for the rejection.

7. A system, comprising:

a dataflow device; and

a software-defined networking (SDN) controller comprising:

processing circuitry; and

a non-transitory computer-readable medium including instructions that, when executed by the processing circuitry, cause the SDN controller to:

receive device information from the dataflow device;

retrieve information from a database relating to supported device features of the dataflow device;

determine whether the dataflow device supports a certain command;

determine one or more unverified device features supported by the dataflow device based on one or more common device attributes between the dataflow device and one or more other dataflow devices; and

transmit a command to the dataflow device.

8. The system of claim 7 , wherein the SDN controller is further to:

receive a response to the transmitted command; and

update the information from the database relating to the supported device features of the dataflow device based in part on the received response.

9. The system of claim 8 , wherein the SDN controller is further to transmit a modified command to the dataflow device based on the received response, the supported device features of the dataflow device, and the previously transmitted command.

10. The system of claim 8 , wherein the database is located on a cloud server.

11. The system of claim 10 , wherein the SDN controller is further to transmit the updated information to the cloud server.

12. The system of claim 7 , wherein the supported device features of the dataflow device include commands of an SDN protocol that are compatible with the dataflow device.

13. A method for operating a software-defined networking (SDN) network, comprising:

determining one or more unverified device features supported by a dataflow device based on one or more common device attributes between the dataflow device and one or more other dataflow devices;

transmitting a command to the dataflow device based on the identified device features and determined unverified device features;

receiving a response to the command at the SDN controller;

determining, based on the response, that information stored in a database relating to supported device features of the dataflow device should be updated; and

updating the supported device features of the dataflow device in the database.

14. The method of claim 13 , further comprising transmitting a modified command from the SDN controller to the dataflow device based on the received response, the updated supported device features of the dataflow device, and the previously transmitted command.

15. The method of claim 13 , wherein the information relating to supported device features of the dataflow device includes commands of an SDN protocol that are compatible with the dataflow device, commands of an SDN protocol that are conditionally compatible with the dataflow device, and commands of an SDN protocol that are not compatible with the dataflow device.

16. The method of claim 15 , wherein the received response includes a rejection of the command.

17. The method of claim 16 , wherein the received response further includes a reason for the rejection of the command.

18. The method of claim 13 , further comprising transmitting the updated supported device features to a device feature repository.

19. The method of claim 18 , wherein the device feature repository is located on a cloud server.