No Arabic abstract
Providing resilient network control is a critical concern for deploying Software-Defined Networking (SDN) into Wide-Area Networks (WANs). For performance reasons, a Software-Defined WAN is divided into multiple domains controlled by multiple controllers with a logically centralized view. Under controller failures, we need to remap the control of offline switches from failed controllers to other active controllers. Existing solutions could either overload active controllers to interrupt their normal operations or degrade network performance because of increasing the controller-switch communication overhead. In this paper, we propose RetroFlow to achieve low communication overhead without interrupting the normal processing of active controllers during controller failures. By intelligently configuring a set of selected offline switches working under the legacy routing mode, RetroFlow relieves the active controllers from controlling the selected offline switches while maintaining the flow programmability (e.g., the ability to change paths of flows) of SDN. RetroFlow also smartly transfers the control of offline switches with the SDN routing mode to active controllers to minimize the communication overhead from these offline switches to the active controllers. Simulation results show that compared with the baseline algorithm, RetroFlow can reduce the communication overhead up to 52.6% during a moderate controller failure by recovering 100% flows from offline switches and can reduce the communication overhead up to 61.2% during a serious controller failure by setting to recover 90% of flows from offline switches.
Software Defined Networking (SDN) promises greater flexibility for directing packet flows, and Network Function Virtualization promises to enable dynamic management of software-based network functions. However, the current divide between an intelligent control plane and an overly simple, stateless data plane results in the inability to exploit the flexibility of a software based network. In this paper we propose SDNFV, a framework that expands the capabilities of network processing-and-forwarding elements to flexibly manage packet flows, while retaining both a high performance data plane and an easily managed control plane. SDNFV proposes a hierarchical control framework where decisions are made across the SDN controller, a host-level manager, and individual VMs to best exploit state available at each level. This increases the networks flexibility compared to existing SDNs where controllers often make decisions solely based on the first packet header of a flow. SDNFV intelligently places network services across hosts and connects them in sequential and parallel chains, giving both the SDN controller and individual network functions the ability to enhance and update flow rules to adapt to changing conditions. Our prototype demonstrates how to efficiently and flexibly reroute flows based on data plane state such as packet payloads and traffic characteristics.
Based on software-defined principles, we propose a holistic architecture for Cyberphysical Systems (CPS) and Internet of Things (IoT) applications, and highlight the merits pertaining to scalability, flexibility, robustness, interoperability, and cyber security. Our design especially capitalizes on the computational units possessed by smart agents, which may be utilized for decentralized control and in-network data processing. We characterize the data flow, communication flow, and control flow that assimilate a set of components such as sensors, actuators, controllers, and coordinators in a systemic programmable fashion. We specifically aim for distributed and decentralized decision-making by spreading the control over several hierarchical layers. In addition, we propose a middleware layer to encapsulate units and services for time-critical operations in highly dynamic environments. We further enlist a multitude of vulnerabilities to cyberattacks, and integrate software-defined solutions for enabling resilience, detection, and recovery. In this purview, several controllers cooperate to identify and respond to security threats and abnormal situations in a self-adjusting manner. Last, we illustrate numerical simulations in support of the virtues of a software-defined design for CPS and IoT.
To increase the scalability of Software Defined Networks (SDNs), flow aggregation schemes have been proposed to merge multiple mouse flows into an elephant aggregated flow for traffic engineering. In this paper, we first notice that the user bit-rate requirements of mouse flows are no longer guaranteed in the aggregated flow since the flow rate decided by the TCP allocation is usually different from the desired bit-rate of each user. To address the above issue, we present a novel architecture, named Flexible Flow And Rate Management (F$^2$ARM), to control the rates of only a few flows in order to increase the scalability of SDN, while leaving the uncontrolled flows managed by TCP. We formulate a new optimization problem, named Scalable Per-Flow Rate Control for SDN (SPFRCS), which aims to find a minimum subset of flows as controlled flows but ensure that the flow rates of all uncontrolled flows can still satisfy the minimum required rates by TCP. We prove that SPFRCS is NP-hard and design an efficient algorithm, named Joint Flow Selection and Rate Determination (JFSRD). Simulation results based on real networks manifest that JFSRD performs nearly optimally in small-scale networks, and the number of controlled flows can be effectively reduced by 50% in real networks.
Previous research on SDN traffic engineering mostly focuses on static traffic, whereas dynamic traffic, though more practical, has drawn much less attention. Especially, online SDN multicast that supports IETF dynamic group membership (i.e., any user can join or leave at any time) has not been explored. Different from traditional shortest-path trees (SPT) and graph theoretical Steiner trees (ST), which concentrate on routing one tree at any instant, online SDN multicast traffic engineering is more challenging because it needs to support dynamic group membership and optimize a sequence of correlated trees without the knowledge of future join and leave, whereas the scalability of SDN due to limited TCAM is also crucial. In this paper, therefore, we formulate a new optimization problem, named Online Branch-aware Steiner Tree (OBST), to jointly consider the bandwidth consumption, SDN multicast scalability, and rerouting overhead. We prove that OBST is NP-hard and does not have a $|D_{max}|^{1-epsilon}$-competitive algorithm for any $epsilon >0$, where $|D_{max}|$ is the largest group size at any time. We design a $|D_{max}|$-competitive algorithm equipped with the notion of the budget, the deposit, and Reference Tree to achieve the tightest bound. The simulations and implementation on real SDNs with YouTube traffic manifest that the total cost can be reduced by at least 25% compared with SPT and ST, and the computation time is small for massive SDN.
Recently, Internet service providers (ISPs) have gained increased flexibility in how they configure their in-ground optical fiber into an IP network. This greater control has been made possible by (i) the maturation of software defined networking (SDN), and (ii) improvements in optical switching technology. Whereas traditionally, at network design time, each IP link was assigned a fixed optical path and bandwidth, modern colorless and directionless Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers (CD ROADMs) allow a remote SDN controller to remap the IP topology to the optical underlay on the fly. Consequently, ISPs face new opportunities and challenges in the design and operation of their backbone networks. Specifically, ISPs must determine how best to design their networks to take advantage of the new capabilities; they need an automated way to generate the least expensive network design that still delivers all offered traffic, even in the presence of equipment failures. This problem is difficult because of the physical constraints governing the placement of optical regenerators, a piece of optical equipment necessary for maintaining an optical signal over long stretches of fiber. As a solution, we present an integer linear program (ILP) which (1) solves the equipment-placement network design problem; (2) determines the optimal mapping of IP links to the optical infrastructure for any given failure scenario; and (3) determines how best to route the offered traffic over the IP topology. To scale to larger networks, we also describe an efficient heuristic that finds nearly optimal network designs in a fraction of the time. Further, in our experiments our ILP offers cost savings of up to 29% compared to traditional network design techniques.