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Enhancing Scalability in Software-defined Networks

Shakeri, Sara | 2015

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 47847 (19)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Computer Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Jahangir, Amir Hossein
  7. Abstract:
  8. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging paradigm which makes the network programmable by separating the control plane from data plane and makes both planes to work independently. There is a centralized controller and a programmable data plane in these networks architecture and forwarding data packets is realized by programming the data plane via an open interface called OpenFlow. OpenFlow is a communication protocol between control and data planes. The centralized architecture of these networks provides a global view of the underlying network to upper applications and brings numerous advantages such as routing, traffic engineering and QoS control. Despite these advantages there are some concerns about SDN scalability. A central controller does not scale up when the network grows and in some cases the controller fails to handle all incoming requests. This thesis shows the main problem of scalability is the limitation and fixed size of resources, the key solution for this problem is to reduce the load on the controller. Some previous works used distributed mechanisms to divide the load on multiple controllers, but they have limitation on number of events due to consistency overheads. Some others introduce new functionalities in switches to suppress frequent events and keep the traffic in the data plane, but these methods are complex and in addition, they are not compatible with OpenFlow standard. This thesis tried to enhance the scalability by a different way. We try to decrease the controller load via predicting the necessary rules in the network and installing them proactively on the switches, with the hope that the switch will access them in the near future. We use the locality of reference principle mechanisms for selecting rules. The key advantage of our solution is its compatibility with the OpenFlow standard and orthogonality with other solutions. By using this method we have decreased the number of OpenFlow switch messages to the controller by up to 50 percent in some cases
  9. Keywords:
  10. OpenFlow Protocol ; Scalability ; Software Defined Networks (SDN)

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