Applying TOPSIS Method for Software Defined Networking (SDN) Controllers Comparison and Selection

Current traditional IP networks start to be complex as the demands of the users are ever-growing. Software Defined Network (SDN) is a new paradigm to ease the management of the network and make the network programmable by decoupling the control plane and forwarding plane (such as switch and router). A centralized controller is used to manage the control plane, and it interacts with the forwarding plane using a standardized OpenFlow protocol. However, many controllers are used recently such as POX, Ryu, ONOS, and OpenDaylight. The important question is which is the best controller to use in our network and fits our network’s goals? To answer this question, a decision-making method is proposed in this paper. First, four SDN controllers are selected, and five criteria are analyzed to collect these controllers’ properties. Then a Multi-Criteria Decision Making method named TOPSIS is used to rank the controllers and choose the best one. By applying this method, a comparative study is done to evaluate the four controllers in an environment of LAN topology, and “Ryu” controller is selected as the best one based on our criteria.