SAHAR: a control plane architecture for high available software-defined networks. (24th April 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Shetabi, Mehran; Akbari, Ahmad
• Is Part Of: International journal of communication networks and distributed systems. Volume 24:Number 4(2020)
• Page Start: 409
• Page End: 440
• Publication Date: 2020-04-24
• Subjects: software-defined networking -- SDN -- OpenFlow -- availability -- multiple-controllers; Computer networks -- Periodicals; Telecommunication systems -- Periodicals; Electronic data processing -- Distributed processing -- Periodicals; 004.6
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1754-3916

Abstract

Software-defined networking (SDN) is an architectural paradigm which enables a centralised control by decoupling the data and control planes of a network. In reactive mode of SDN, the significant variation in flow arrival events places considerable stress on the control plane. Also, the existence of frequent events such as network-wide statistics collection which significantly interfere with the basic functions of control plane can drastically affect performance of control plane. Therefore, this paper introduces a new architectural model named SAHAR that uses a controller box consisting of a coordinator controller and a primary flow-setup controller and one or more secondary flow-setup controllers as needed. Assigning monitor and management tasks to the coordinator controller reduces the load on the flowsetup controllers. Also, dividing input traffic between flow-setup controllers by the coordinator controller distributes the load in the control plane. In this way, SAHAR achieves a high available SDN which can be scalable.