Traffic-Aware Dynamic Controller Assignment in SDN
Samaresh Bera, Sudip Misra, Niloy Saha
Abstract
In this paper, we propose a dynamic controller assignment scheme while considering flow-specific requirements, with an aim to minimize controller response time in software-defined networks (SDN). Using the FlowVisor model, we develop a virtualized platform that acts as a manager between the control- and data-planes of SDN architecture. The proposed scheme consists of two phases - adaptive window selection and controller assignment. In the window selection phase, the virtualized manager determines time to wait before incoming flows can be assigned to controllers in adaptive manner. Based on the adaptive window size, the flows are assigned to the controllers in the second phase. We use dynamic stable-matching game to assign flows to controllers, while defining their preference lists to minimize flow-setup delay and associated control overhead. Simulation studies show that the proposed scheme is capable of minimizing controller response time by atleast 31% compared to the existing state-of-the-art. Further, the proposed scheme also reduces the percentage of QoS violated flows in the network.