Distributed Software-Defined Networking Management
An Overview and Open Challenges
Abstract
Distributed software-defined networking (SDN) architecture satisfies the minimum requirements for WANs. The distributed controllers are connected in various topologies, including hierarchical and flat, which include logically centralized, physically distributed, and fully distributed controllers. The distributed SDN architectures are qualitatively explored as a more suitable solution for managing fluctuating networks in large-scale deployments, with the goal of optimizing overall network performance, particularly for applications that can tolerate some level of inconsistency, such as load balancing or routing. The logically centralized, physically distributed SDN controller architecture allows SDN controllers, in conjunction with the deployed SDN applications, to centrally coordinate the network due to the conciliated global network view. That is created through the synchronization process between controllers. However, inter-controller synchronization creates an overhead that affects the system’s performance. Additionally, the amount of inter-controller synchronization is vulnerable to the chosen consistency approach the application can tolerate. Although static eventual consistency is frequently employed in modern SDN systems to provide effective scalability, it is argued that it doesn’t place limits on the state inconsistencies that SDN applications will tolerate. Hence, the adaptive consistency models need to be investigated. The study showed that a flat, logically centralized, physically distributed architecture with an adaptive consistency approach would be more suitable for solving large-scale fluctuating network management considering scalability, reliability, and maximizing performance.
Downloads
References
Abadi, D., 2012. Consistency tradeoffs in modern distributed database system design: CAP is Only part of the story. Computer, 45(2), pp.37-42. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/MC.2012.33
Ahmad, S., and Mir, A.H., 2021. Scalability, consistency, reliability, and security in SDN controllers: A survey of diverse SDN controllers. Journal of Network and Systems Management, 29(1), pp.1-59. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10922-020-09575-4
Akyildiz, I.F., 2014. A roadmap for traffic engineering SDN-OpenFlow networks. Computer Networks, 71, pp.1-30. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2014.06.002
Almadani, B., Beg, A., and Mahmoud, A., 2021. DSF: A distributed SDN control plane framework for the East/West interface. IEEE Access, 9, pp.26735-26754. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3057690
Alowa, A., and Fevens, T., 2020. Towards minimum inter-controller delay time in software defined networking. Procedia Computer Science, 175, pp.395-402. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2020.07.056
Aslan, M., and Matrawy, A., 2016. Adaptive Consistency for Distributed SDN Controllers. In: 2016 17th International Telecommunications Network Strategy and Planning Symposium, Networks 2016-Conference Proceedings. Vo. 1, pp.150-157. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/NETWKS.2016.7751168
Atomix. Available from: https://atomix.io [Last accessed on 2023 Jun 07].
Bannour, F., Souihi, S., and Mellouk, A., 2018a. Adaptive State Consistency for Distributed ONOS Controllers. In: 2018 IEEE Global Communications Conference, GLOBECOM 2018-Proceedings. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/GLOCOM.2018.8647168
Bannour, F., Souihi, S., and Mellouk, A., 2018b. Distributed SDN control: Survey, taxonomy and challenges. IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, 20(1), pp.333-354. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2017.2782482
Blial, O., Ben Mamoun, M., and Benaini, R., 2016. An overview on SDN architectures with multiple controllers. Journal of Computer Networks and Communications, 2016, p.9396525. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/9396525
Brewer, E.A., 2000. Towards Robust Distributed Systems. In: Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, p.7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/343477.343502
Chen, M., Ding, K., Hao, J., Hu, C., Xie, G., Xing, C., and Chen, B., 2017. LCMSC: A lightweight collaborative mechanism for SDN controllers. Computer Networks, 121, pp.65-75. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2017.04.029
Clark, D.D., Partridge, C., Ramming, J.C., and Wroclawski, J.T., 2003. A knowledge plane for the internet. Computer Communication Review, 33(4), pp.3-10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/863955.863957
Dixi, A., Hao, F., Mukherjee, S., Lakshman, T.V., and Kompella, R.R., 2014. ElastiCon: An elastic distributed SDN controller. In: ANCS 2014-10th 2014 ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems, pp.17-27. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2658260.2658261
Espinel Sarmiento, D., Lèbre, A., Nussbaum, L., and Chari, A., 2021. Decentralized SDN control plane for a distributed cloud-edge infrastructure: A survey. IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, 23(1), pp.256-281. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2021.3050297
Ferguson, A.D., Gribble, S., Hong, C.Y., Killian, C., Mohsin, W., Muehe, H., Ong, J., Poutievski, L., Singh, A., Vicisano, L., Alimi, R., Chen, S.S., Conley, M., Mandal, S., Nagaraj, K., Bollineni, KN., Sabaa, A., Zhang, S., Zhu, M., and Vahdat, A., 2021. Orion : Google’s Software-Defined Networking Control Plane Proceedings of the 18th USENIX Symposium on Orion : Google’s Software-Defined Networking Control Plane. Proceedings of NSDI 2021: 18th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, pp.83-98.
Foerster, K.T., Schmid, S., and Vissicchio, S., 2019. Survey of consistent software-defined network updates. IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, 21(2), pp.1435-1461. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2018.2876749
Hassas Yeganeh, S., and Ganjali, Y., 2012. Kandoo: A Framework for Efficient and Scalable Offloading of Control Applications. In: Proceedings of the First Workshop on Hot Topics in Software Defined Networks, HotSDN ’12. p.19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2342441.2342446
Hoang, N.T., Nguyen, H.N., Tran, H.N., and Souihi, S., 2022. A novel adaptive East-West interface for a heterogeneous and distributed SDN network. Electronics (Switzerland), 11(7), pp.1-20. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11070975
Home-OpenDaylight. Available from: https://www.opendaylight.org [Last accessed on 2023 Mar 14].
Hu, J., Li, X., and Huang, J., 2014. Scalability of Control Planes for Software Defined Networks: Modeling and Evaluation. In: IEEE International Workshop on Quality of Service, IWQoS, pp.147-152. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/IWQoS.2014.6914314
Hussein, A., Chehab, A., Kayssi, A.I., and Elhajj, I.H., 2018. Machine Learning for Network Resilience: The Start of a Journey. 2018 5th International Conference on Software Defined Systems, SDS 2018, pp. 59-66. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/SDS.2018.8370423
Informatique, S., and Informatique, G., 2021. Extending SDN Control to Large-scale Networks : Taxonomy, Challenges and Solutions To Cite this Version : HAL Id : Tel-03456621 Université Paris-Est Créteil THÈSE Docteur de l’ Université Paris-Est Contributions Pour le Contrôle Distribué Dans les Résea.
Jain, S., Kumar, A., Mandal, S., Ong, J., Poutievski, L., Singh, A., Venkata, S., Wanderer, J., Zhou, J., Zhu, M., Zolla, J., Hölzle, U., Stuart, S., and Vahdat, A., 2013. B4: Experience with a Globally-deployed Software-defined WAN. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2013 Conference on SIGCOMM, pp.3-14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2486001.2486019
Keshari, S.K., Kansal, V., and Kumar, S., 2021. A systematic review of quality of services (QoS) in software defined networking (SDN). Wireless Personal Communications, 116(3), pp.2593-2614. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-020-07812-2
Koponen, T., Casado, M., Gude, N., Stribling, J., Poutievski, L,Zhu, M., Ramanathan, R., Iwata, Y., Inoue, H., Hama, T., and Shenker, S., 2010. Onix: A Distributed Control Platform for Large-scale Production Networks. USENIX Conference on Operating Systems Design and Implement, 10, pp.1-14.
Levin, D., Wundsam, A., Heller, B., Handigol, N., and Feldmann, A., 2012. Logically Centralized? State Distribution Trade-offs in Software Defined networks. HotSDN’12-Proceedings of the 1st ACM International Workshop on Hot Topics in Software Defined Networks, pp.1-6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2342441.2342443
Mestres, S.A., Rodríguez Natal, A., Carner Marsal, J., Barlet R., Alarcón C., Sole, M., Muntés, M., Meyer, D., Barkai, S., Hibbett, M.J., Estrada, G., Coras, F.T., Ermagan, V., Latapie, H., Cassar, C., Evans, J., Walrand, J., and Cabellos Aparicio, A., 2017. Knowledge-defined networking. Computer Communication Review, 47(3), pp.1-10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3138808.3138810
Oktian, Y.E., Lee S.G., Lee H.J., and Lam, J.H., 2017. Distributed SDN controller system: A survey on design choice. Computer Networks, 121, pp.100-111. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2017.04.038
Open Network Operating System (ONOS) SDN Controller for SDN/NFV Solutions. Available from: https://opennetworking.org/onos [Last accessed on 2022 Jun 26].OpenStack Docs: Distributed Dragonflow. Available from: https://docs.openstack.org/developer/dragonflow/distributed_dragonflow.html [Last accessed on 2021 Nov 21].
Panda, A., Scott, C., Ghodsi, A., Koponen, T., and Shenker, S., 2013. CAP for Networks. HotSDN 2013-Proceedings of the 2013 ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Hot Topics in Software Defined Networking, pp.91-96. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2491185.2491186
Phemius, K., Bouet, M., and Leguay, J., 2014. DISCO: Distributed Multi-domain SDN Controllers. IEEE/IFIP NOMS 2014 - IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium: Management in a Software Defined World. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/NOMS.2014.6838330
Poularakis, K., Qin, Q., Ma, L., Kompella, S., Leung, K.K., and Tassiulas, L., 2019. Learning the Optimal Synchronization Rates in Distributed SDN Control Architectures. In: Proceedings-IEEE INFOCOM, 2019-April, pp.1099-1107. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/INFOCOM.2019.8737388
Saito, Y., and Shapiro, M., 2010. Optimistic replication. ACM Computing Surveys, 37(1), pp.42-81. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/1057977.1057980
Sakic, E., Sardis, F., Guck, J.W., and Kellerer, W., 2017. Towards Adaptive State Consistency in Distributed SDN Control Plane. In: IEEE International Conference on Communications. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICC.2017.7997164
Seth Gilbert and Nancy Lynch, 2002. Brewer’s conjecture and the feasibility of consistent, available, partition-tolerant web services. ACM SIGACT News, 33(2), pp.51-59. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/564585.564601
Tadros, C.N., Mokhtar, B., and Rizk, M.R.M., 2019. Logically Centralized-Physically Distributed Software Defined Network Controller Architecture. In: 2018 IEEE Global Conference on Internet of Things, GCIoT 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/GCIoT.2018.8620166
Tootoonchian, A., and Ganjali, Y., 2010. HyperFlow: A Distributed Control Plane for OpenFlow. In: 2010 Internet Network Management Workshop/Workshop on Research on Enterprise Networking, INM/WREN 2010.
The Open Networking Foundation (ONF), 2019. Reference Design SDN Enabled Broadband Access. The Open Networking Foundation, United States.
Yu, H., Qi, H., and Li, K., 2020. WECAN: An efficient West-East control associated network for large-scale SDN systems. Mobile Networks and Applications, 25(1), pp.114-124. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-018-1194-9
Zhang, B., Wang, X., and Huang, M., 2018. Adaptive consistency strategy of multiple controllers in SDN. IEEE Access, 6, pp.78640-78649. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2885130
Copyright (c) 2024 Rawan S. Alsheikh, Etimad A. Fadel, Nadine T. Akkari
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who choose to publish their work with Aro agree to the following terms:
-
Authors retain the copyright to their work and grant the journal the right of first publication. The work is simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License [CC BY-NC-SA 4.0]. This license allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
-
Authors have the freedom to enter into separate agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work. This includes options such as posting it to an institutional repository or publishing it in a book, as long as proper acknowledgement is given to its initial publication in this journal.
-
Authors are encouraged to share and post their work online, including in institutional repositories or on their personal websites, both prior to and during the submission process. This practice can lead to productive exchanges and increase the visibility and citation of the published work.
By agreeing to these terms, authors acknowledge the importance of open access and the benefits it brings to the scholarly community.
ARO Journal is a scientific, peer-reviewed, periodical, and OAJ that has no APC or ASC.