Floodlight is a Java-based OpenFlow controller, based on the Beacon implementation, which supports both physical and virtual OpenFlow switches. Beacon is a cross-platform, modular OpenFlow controller, also implemented in Java. It supports event-based and threaded operation. Beacon was created by David Erickson at Stanford University as a Java-based and cross-platform OpenFlow controller. Prior to being licensed under GPL v2, Floodlight was forked from Beacon, which carries on with an Apache license.

Floodlight has been redesigned without the OSGI framework. Therefore, it can be built, run, and modified without OSGI experience. Besides, Floodlight's community currently includes a number of developers at Big Switch Networks who are actively testing and fixing bugs, and building additional tools, plugins, and features for it. The Floodlight controller is intended to be a platform for a wide variety of Net Apps. Net Apps are important, since they provide solutions to real-world networking problems. One of Floodlight's Net Apps is a circuit pusher.

The circuit pusher creates a flow and provisions switches along the path to the packet's destination. The bidirectional circuit between source and destination is a permanent flow entry on all switches in the route, based on the IP addresses between the two devices with a specific priority.

These are the key characteristics of the circuit pusher:

• The specified end points must be known to the controller before sending a rest API request to the circuit pusher.
• To enable the circuit pusher, you are required to directly execute the circuitpusher.py Python code, which is as follows:

      circuitpusher.py --controller={IP}:{rest port} --type ip 
      --src {IP} --dst {IP} --add --name {circuit-name}.

• The specified end points must be known to the controller before sending a rest API request to the circuit pusher.