Loading...

Managing the Capacity of FlowTables in Software-Defined Networks

Saberi, Mohammad | 2024

0 Viewed
  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 57856 (19)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Computer Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Movaghar, Ali; Dolati, Mahdi
  7. Abstract:
  8. In traditional networks, network management was performed locally at the data layer by switches and routers. This approach made it difficult to make optimal decisions with a comprehensive view of the network. Software-Defined Networks (SDNs), by separating the control layer from the data layer, introduced a centralized decision-making unit in the network. This decision-making layer, equipped with overall network information, makes decisions that enhance the overall efficiency of the network. Software-defined networks provide customizable traffic control by storing numerous rules in on-chip memories with minimal access latency. However, the current on-chip memory capacity falls short of meeting the growing demands of SDN control applications. Due to certain limitations, it is not possible to increase the storage capacity of these memories. One of these limitations is the heat generated by the memories; they produce significant heat during rule lookup due to their parallel search capability and high speed. As the capac- ity increases, the heat generation becomes even greater, which would be intolerable for the switch. Another limitation is the physical space occupied by the memory. Increas- ing the capacity of these memories leads to a significantly larger physical size compared to other types of memory, which is not feasible for our use case. While rule eviction and aggregation strategies address this challenge at the switch level, programmable data planes enable a more flexible approach through cooperative rule caching. How- ever, current solutions rely on computationally intensive off-the-shelf solvers to perform rule placement across the network. In this work, we present an efficient solution for the cooperative rule caching problem. We first present the design of a resource-efficient switch capable of caching rules for its neighbors alongside a lightweight protocol for retrieving cached rules. Then, we introduce RaSe, an approximation algorithm for min- imizing rule lookup latency across the network through optimized cooperation-aware rule placement. We conduct a theoretical analysis of RaSe, followed by a P4-based proof-of-concept assessment in Mininet and a large-scale numerical evaluation using real-world network topology. In comparison with existing solver-based solutions, the proposed method obtains the solution 160 times faster and improves the average rule lookup latency by about 21% compared to several algorithmic baselines
  9. Keywords:
  10. Software Defined Networking (SDN) ; Data Plane ; Optimization ; Approximate Algorithm ; Rule Caching ; Switch Cooperation

 Digital Object List

 Bookmark

...see more