학술논문

Orchestrator for Synchronizing Network Events in SDNs
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management IEEE Trans. Netw. Serv. Manage. Network and Service Management, IEEE Transactions on. 18(4):4365-4375 Dec, 2021
Subject
Communication, Networking and Broadcast Technologies
Computing and Processing
Scalability
Switches
Performance evaluation
Data centers
Topology
Optimization
Centralized control
OpenFlow
SDN controller
flow table
timeouts
packet%5Fins<%2Fitalic>%22">packet_ins
flow%5Fmods<%2Fitalic>%22">flow_mods
TCAM
Language
ISSN
1932-4537
2373-7379
Abstract
In Software-defined networks (SDNs), synchronization among network devices is an emergent phenomenon for enhancing the network scalability while preserving the centralized control. Owing to the fixed timeout values attributed to flow rules by the controller, flow table entries that are installed simultaneously are likely to timeout simultaneously and tend to trigger packet_in events at once during the upcoming sampling period. This phenomena in SDNs lead to serious performance and scalability issues when a large number of packet_in events are invoked simultaneously. In the proposed model, the orchestrating agent and the controller duo modulate an ensemble of networking devices from their heterogeneous frequency and incoherent nature of querying the controller into a conciliatory and systematic manner. The orchestrating agent modulates the control flows by altering timeouts, especially for long-lived TCP connections so that the devices do not overwhelm the controller with bursty requests during the future events. In addition, flow_mods to intermediate devices over a multi-hop path are scheduled based on the estimated flow setup latency to avoid redundant packet_ins . The proposed orchestrating agent is implemented in conjunction with the Floodlight controller. The experimental results show that apart from the influence of external delays majority of the flows were well-synchronized and the results show significant improvement in scalability and in the overall performance of the network.