A policy based framework for quality of service management in software defined networks

Growth in multimedia traffic over the Internet increases congestion in the network architecture. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a novel paradigm that solves the congestion problem and allows the network to be dynamic, intelligent, and it centrally controls the network devices. SDN has many advantages in comparison to traditional networks, such as separation of forwarding and control plane from devices, global centralized control, management of network traffic. We design a policy-based framework to enhance the Quality of Service (QoS) of multimedia traffic flows in a potential SDN environment. We phrase a max-flow-min-cost routing problem to determine the routing paths and presented a heuristic method to route the traffic flows in the network in polynomial time. The framework monitors the QoS parameters of traffic flows and identifies policy violations due to link congestion in the network. The introduced approach dynamically implements policy rules to SDN switches upon detection of policy violations and reroutes the traffic flows. The results illustrate that the framework achieves a reduction in end-to-end delay, average jitter, and QoS violated flows by 24%, 37%, and 25%, respectively, as compared to the Delay Minimization method. Furthermore, the proposed approach has achieved better results when compared to SDN without policy-based framework and reduced end-to-end delay, average jitter, and QoS violated flows by 51%, 62%, and 28%, respectively.

     

TCP-LP: low-priority service via end-point congestion control

Service prioritization among different traffic classes is an important goal for the Internet. Conventional approaches to solving this problem consider the existing best-effort class as the low-priority class, and attempt to develop mechanisms that provide "better-than-best-effort" service. In this paper, we explore the opposite approach, and devise a new distributed algorithm to realize a low-priority service (as compared to the existing best effort) from the network endpoints. To this end, we develop TCP Low Priority (TCP-LP), a distributed algorithm whose goal is to utilize only the excess network bandwidth as compared to the "fair share" of bandwidth as targeted by TCP. The key mechanisms unique to TCP-LP congestion control are the use of one-way packet delays for early congestion indications and a TCP-transparent congestion avoidance policy. The results of our simulation and Internet experiments show that: 1) TCP-LP is largely non-intrusive to TCP traffic; 2) both single and aggregate TCP-LP flows are able to successfully utilize excess network bandwidth; moreover, multiple TCP-LP flows share excess bandwidth fairly; 3) substantial amounts of excess bandwidth are available to the low-priority class, even in the presence of "greedy" TCP flows; 4) the response times of web connections in the best-effort class decrease by up to 90% when long-lived bulk data transfers use TCP-LP rather than TCP; 5) despite their low-priority nature, TCP-LP flows are able to utilize significant amounts of available bandwidth in a wide-area network environment.     

Pluggable SDN framework for managing heterogeneous SDN networks

Software‐defined networking (SDN) is a new network paradigm that is separating the data plane and the control plane of the network, making one or more centralized controllers to supervise the behaviour of the entire network. Different types of SDN controller software exist, and research dealing with the difficulties of consistently integrating these different controller types has mostly been declared future work. In this paper, the Domino framework is proposed, a pluggable SDN framework for managing heterogeneous SDN networks. In contrast to related work, the proposed framework allows research into SDN networks controlled by different types of SDN controllers attempting to standardize the northbound API of them. Domino implements a microservice plugin architecture where users can link different SDN networks to a processing algorithm. Such an algorithm allows for, eg, adapting the flows by building a pipeline using plugins that either invoke other SDN operations or generic data processing algorithms. The Domino framework is evaluated by implementing a proof‐of‐concept implementation, which is tested on the initial requirements. It achieves the modifiability and the interoperability with an average successful exchange ratio of 99.99%. The performance requirements are met for the frequently used commands with an average response time of 0.26 seconds, and the framework can handle at least 72 plugins simultaneously depending on the available amount of RAM. The proposed framework is evaluated by means of the implementation of a shortest path routing algorithm between heterogeneous SDN networks.     

FEBA: A Bandwidth Allocation Algorithm for Service Differentiation in IEEE 802.16 Mesh Networks

In wireless mesh networks, the end-to-end throughput of traffic flows depends on the path length, i.e., the higher the number of hops, the lower becomes the throughput. In this paper, a fair end-to-end bandwidth allocation (FEBA) algorithm is introduced to solve this problem. FEBA is implemented at the medium access control (MAC) layer of single-radio, multiple channels IEEE 802.16 mesh nodes, operated in a distributed coordinated scheduling mode. FEBA negotiates bandwidth among neighbors to assign a fair share proportional to a specified weight to each end-to-end traffic flow. This way traffic flows are served in a differentiated manner, with higher priority traffic flows being allocated more bandwidth on the average than the lower priority traffic flows. In fact, a node requests/grants bandwidth from/to its neighbors in a round-robin fashion where the amount of service depends on both the load on its different links and the priority of currently active traffic flows. If multiple channels are available, they are all shared evenly in order to increase the network capacity due to frequency reuse. The performance of FEBA is evaluated by extensive simulations. It is shown that wireless resources are shared fairly among best-effort traffic flows, while multimedia streams are provided with a differentiated service that enables quality of service.     

Toward manageable middleboxes in software‐defined networking

Software‐defined networking (SDN) acts as a centralized management unit, especially in a network with devices that operate under the transport layer of the OSI model. However, when a network with layer 7 middleboxes (MBs) is considered, current SDNs exhibit limitations. As such, to achieve a real‐centralized management unit, a new architecture is required that decouples the data and control planes of all network devices. In this report, we propose such a complementary architecture to the current SDN in which SDN‐enabled MBs are included along with contemporary SDN‐enabled switches. The management unit of this architecture improves network performance and reduces routing cost by considering the status of the MBs during flow forwarding. This unit consists of the following two parts: an SDN controller (SDNC) and a middlebox controller (MBC). The latter selects the best MBs for each flow and the former determines the best path according to its routing algorithm and provides information via the MBC. The results show that the proposed architecture improved performance because the utilization of all network devices including MBs is manageable.     

面向软件定义广域网的路径可编程性保障研究综述

软件定义网络(SDN)被誉为下一代网络的关键技术。近年来，SDN已经成为学术界与工业界的热点。广域网是SDN应用到工业界的一个重要的场景。基于SDN的广域网被称为软件定义广域网(SD-WAN)。在SD-WAN中，SDN控制器通过控制流转发路径上的SDN交换机来实现流的路径可编程性。然而，控制器失效是SD-WAN中一种常见的现象。当控制器失效时，流转发路径上的交换机会失去控制，流的路径可编程性将无法得到保障，从而无法实现对网络流量的灵活调度，导致网络性能下降。该文对SD-WAN控制器失效场景下保证路径可编程性的研究工作进行了综述。该文首先阐述了当控制器失效时，SD-WAN中路径可编程性保障研究的背景及意义。随后，在查阅分析了国内外相关文献的基础上，介绍了当前在控制器失效时SD-WAN对交换机的主流控制方案。最后，对现有研究成果可能的进一步提高之处进行了总结，并对此研究的未来发展与研究前景进行了展望。     

Exploiting the control power of SDN during the transition from IP to SDN networks

The emerging software‐defined networking (SDN) paradigm introduces new opportunities to improve network performance due to the flexibility and programmability provided by a logically centralized element named controller. However, a rapid adoption of the full SDN architecture is difficult in the short term due to economic and technical reasons. This paper faces the SDN nodes replacement problem during the transition from traditional IP networks to fully deployed SDN networks. Six different replacement methods are proposed to select the most appropriate set of traditional IP nodes to be upgraded to SDN‐enabled switches at a particular transition stage. To show the effectiveness of the proposed methods, they have been applied on an optimization problem currently studied by the research community: the power consumption problem. An integer linear programming formulation is presented to solve it and a genetic algorithm is evaluated through simulations on realistic network topologies. Results highlight that energy‐efficiency in hybrid IP/SDN networks can be significantly improved by only replacing a reduced number of IP nodes.     

A distributed scheduling architecture for scalable packet switches

The continuous growth in the demand for diversified quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees in broadband networks introduces new challenges in the design of packet switches that scale to large switching capacities. Packet scheduling is the most critical function involved in the provision of individual bandwidth and delay guarantees to the switched flows. Most of the scheduling techniques proposed so far assume the presence in the switch of a single contention point, residing in front of the outgoing links. Such an assumption is not consistent with the highly distributed nature of many popular architectures for scalable switches, which typically have multiple contention points, located in both ingress and egress port cards, as well as in the switching fabric. We define a distributed multilayered scheduler (DMS) to provide differentiated QoS guarantees to individual end-to-end flows in packet switches with multiple contention points. Our scheduling architecture is simple to implement, since it keeps per-flow scheduling confined within the port cards, and is suitable to support guaranteed and best-effort traffic in a wide range of QoS frameworks in both IP and ATM networks     

Challenge-based collaborative intrusion detection in software-defined networking: an evaluation

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging architecture that enables a computer network to be intelligently and centrally controlled via software applications. It can help manage the whole network environment in a consistent and holistic way, without the need of understanding the underlying network structure. At present, SDN may face many challenges like insider attacks, i.e., the centralized control plane would be attacked by malicious underlying devices and switches. To protect the security of SDN, effective detection approaches are indispensable. In the literature, challenge-based Collaborative Intrusion Detection Networks (CIDNs) are an effective detection framework in identifying malicious nodes. It calculates the nodes’ reputation and detects a malicious node by sending out a special message called a challenge. In this work, we devise a challenge-based CIDN in SDN and measure its performance against malicious internal nodes. Our results demonstrate that such a mechanism can be effective in SDN environments.     

A genetic algorithm‐based flow update scheduler for software‐defined networks

Software‐defined networking (SDN) facilitates network programmability through a central controller. It dynamically modifies the network configuration to adapt to the changes in the network. In SDN, the controller updates the network configuration through flow updates, ie, installing the flow rules in network devices. However, during the network update, improper scheduling of flow updates can lead to a number of problems including overflowing of the switch flow table memory and the link bandwidth. Another challenge is minimizing the network update completion time during large‐network updates triggered by events such as traffic engineering path updates. The existing centralized approaches do not search the solution space for flow update schedules with optimal completion time. We proposed a hybrid genetic algorithm‐based flow update scheduling method (the GA‐Flow Scheduler). By searching the solution space, the GA‐Flow Scheduler attempts to minimize the completion time of the network update without overflowing the flow table memory of the switches and the link bandwidth. It can be used in combination with other existing flow scheduling methods to improve the network performance and reduce the flow update completion time. In this paper, the GA‐Flow Scheduler is combined with a stand‐alone method called the three‐step method. Through large‐scale experiments, we show that the proposed hybrid approach could reduce the network update time and packet loss. It is concluded that the proposed GA‐Flow Scheduler provides improved performance over the stand‐alone three‐step method. Also, it handles the above‐mentioned network update problems in SDN.     

Dynamic bandwidth management in IEEE 802.11-based multihop wireless networks

In this paper, we propose a new protocol named dynamic regulation of best-effort traffic (DRBT) which supports quality of service (QoS) throughput guarantees and provides a distributed regulation mechanism for best-effort traffic in multihop wireless networks. By adapting dynamically the rate of best-effort traffic at the link layer, DRBT increases the acceptance ratio of QoS flows and provides a good use of the remaining resources through the network. Our protocol also provides an accurate method to evaluate the available bandwidth in IEEE 802.11-based ad hoc networks which is able to differentiate QoS applications from best-effort traffic. Through extensive simulations, we compare the performance of our proposal scheme with some others protocols like QoS protocol for ad hoc real-time traffic for instance.     

Design of an optimized traffic-aware routing algorithm using integer linear programming for software-defined networking

The number of internet users and connected devices has dramatically expanded due to the recent technological boom and the benefits that the internet of things offers to ease our lives. Network scheduling, quality of service, resource allocation, and security issues are now being addressed via software-defined networking (SDN). SDN has several benefits over traditional networks, including global centralized control, managing network traffic, and separating the forwarding and control plane. The work done in this paper aims to design and implement a traffic-aware routing framework based on routing optimization presented as an integer linear programming (ILP) to improve heterogeneous traffic flows' quality of service (QoS) in a simulated SDN environment. With the knowledge that the routing problem is a nondeterministic polynomial-time-hard problem, the proposed scheme aims to decrease the computational routing time to make the ILP-based routing system more suitable for real-time processing. The simulation results illustrate that the proposed framework reduces the computational time by 23% and 49% for Abilene and Goodnet topology, respectively. Additionally, with 1000 flows in the network, the suggested scheme reduces the number of network flows that violate the QoS by 9% and 22% (with Abilene topology) and 16% and 51% (with Goodnet topology) as compared to the existing shortest path delay and sway methods, respectively.     

Multiclass scheduling algorithms for the DAVID metro network

The data and voice integration over dense wavelength-division-multiplexing (DAVID) project proposes a metro network architecture based on several wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) rings interconnected via a bufferless optical switch called Hub. The Hub provides a programmable interconnection among rings on the basis of the outcome of a scheduling algorithm. Nodes connected to rings groom traffic from Internet protocol routers and Ethernet switches and share ring resources. In this paper, we address the problem of designing efficient centralized scheduling algorithms for supporting multiclass traffic services in the DAVID metro network. Two traffic classes are considered: a best-effort class, and a high-priority class with bandwidth guarantees. We define the multiclass scheduling problem at the Hub considering two different node architectures: a simpler one that relies on a complete separation between transmission and reception resources (i.e., WDM channels) and a more complex one in which nodes fully share transmission and reception channels using an erasure stage to drop received packets, thereby allowing wavelength reuse. We propose both optimum and heuristic solutions, and evaluate their performance by simulation, showing that heuristic solutions exhibit a behavior very close to the optimum solution.     

An SDN‐based scalable routing and resource management model for service provider networks

Volume of the Internet traffic has increased significantly in recent years. Service providers (SPs) are now striving to make resource management and considering dynamically changing large volume of network traffic. In this context, software defined networking (SDN) has been alluring the attention of SPs, as it provides virtualization, programmability, ease of management, and so on. Yet severe scalability issues are one of the key challenges of the SDN due to its centralized architecture. First of all, SDN controller may become the bottleneck as the number of flows and switches increase. It is because routing and admission control decisions are made per flow basis by the controller. Second, there is a signaling overhead between the controller and switches since the controller makes decisions on behalf of them. In line with the aforementioned explanations, this paper proposes an SDN‐based scalable routing and resource management model (SRRM) for SPs. The proposed model is twofold. SRRM performs routing, admission control, and signaling operations (RASOs) in a scalable manner. Additionally, resource management has also been accomplished to increase link use. To achieve high degree of scalability and resource use, pre‐established paths (PEPs) between each edge node in the domain are provided. The proposed controller performs RASOs based on PEPs. The controller also balances the load of PEPs and adjusts their path capacities dynamically to increase resource use. Experimental results show that SRRM can successfully perform RASOs in a scalable way and also increase link use even under heavy traffic loads.     

Stateful firewall‐enabled software‐defined network with distributed controllers: A network performance study

SummarySoftware‐defined network (SDN) is constructed by decoupling the control and data plane from the forwarding devices. The control plane operations are managed by centralized or distributed controllers, and the data plane operation is managed by respective forwarding devices. SDN provides an easy and efficient management solutions for software‐programmed consolidated middlebox in virtual machines. Additionally, SDN with centralized controller faces complications like scalability, network bottle neck, and single point failure. In this study, a stateful inspection firewall acts as a middlebox in distributed SDN‐controlled network. The controller is programmed with a failure detection and recovery mechanism to provide reliability and redundancy and enhance the overall performance of the network. The objective of stateful firewall on SDN architecture is to secure the network by monitoring the current connections and maintain its state information until the connection is active. In this paper, the performance of firewall‐enabled SDN with centralized and distributed controllers are measured, compared, and analyzed. The experiments are done using POX controller, and the results are verified by Mininet network emulation tool. The results show that the stateful firewall‐enabled SDN with distributed controller network improves the security, reliability, availability, and overall performance of the network. In the proposed SDN, average network throughput is improved by 43%, average network delay is reduced by 4%, average channel utilization is increased by 40%, average network overhead is reduced by 26%, and average network response time is reduced by 23%.     

Automatic rule installation in case of policy change in software defined networks

Software Defined Networking (SDN) has emerged recently as a new network architecture. It implements both control and management planes at centralized controller and data plane at forwarding devices. Therefore, SDN helps to simplify network management and improves network programmability. Changes in network policies occur frequently by making modifications at controller. However, in existing approaches, the rules installed at switches before policy change at controller are not modified. This can cause violation of network policy by packets. To address this problem, this paper presents a new approach that stores the rules generated at controller. After detecting the change in policy, the proposed approach finds the rules that will be affected by policy change by examining stored rules at controller. Then the affected rules are removed from the forwarding devices. Simulation results reveal that our proposed approach provides less packets violation ratio and normalized traffic overhead as compared to existing approach. Therefore, the proposed approach increases network performance and efficiency.     

Dynamic switch migration towards a scalable SDN control plane

Distributed control plane is a promising approach to scalable software‐defined networking (SDN). Live migration of switches from controllers that are overloaded to those that are underutilized may be a solution to handle peak switch traffic using available control resource. However, such migration has to be performed with a well‐designed mechanism to fully utilize available resources in all three resource dimensions: CPU, bandwidth, and memory. In this article, we first provide a resource model for SDN and reduce the switch migration decision to a centralized resource utilization maximization problem under constraints of CPU, bandwidth, and memory. Second, we show that the problem of maximizing resource utilization in an SDN is equivalent to that of maximizing game players' profits in the context of non‐cooperative game theory. Taking controllers and switches as game players and commodities respectively, the player policy is how to migrate switches among the control plane. Finally, we implement a proof of concept, called GAME‐Switch Migration (GAME‐SM). The numerical experiments using Mininet emulator validate nice properties of our game model in enhancing the performance of control plane in SDN. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dynamic switch migration with noncooperative game towards control plane scalability in SDN

As software‐defined networking (SDN) is a logically centralized technology, the control plane scalability in SDN is increasingly important with the network scale increasing. Load balancing and maximizing resource utilization are very critical to the control plane in SDN, while switch migration is an effective approach to achieve these two performance metrics. However, switch migration is NP‐hard problem because it belongs to the problem of combinatorial optimization. To avoid the NP‐hard problem, we propose a switch migration scheme by adopting noncooperative game to improve the control plane scalability in SDN. First, we design a novel load balancing monitoring scheme to detect the load imbalance between controllers and trigger migrating switches. Then, we use noncooperative game among controllers to decide switch migration to get the maximizing overall profits. Last, we prove that our proposed approach can get Pareto optimality. Extensive simulations prove that our method is able to achieve a more scalable control plane with load balancing and maximizing resource utilization.     

基于OpenFlow的虚拟网实现研究

软件定义网络是一种数据和控制平面分离、软件可编程的新型网络架构及技术,控制平面使用以OpenFlow为代表的协议对转发平面进行集中式控制。SDN架构的这些特点能很好地满足了云计算对虚拟网络的集中化、标准化、自动化的配置管理要求。针对传统虚拟网络技术支持云计算平台的不足,提出基于OpenFlow的SDN技术设计虚拟网络的思路,论述了几种虚拟网络实现的原理与处理流程,并给出了模块化的软件设计及部分关键代码功能描述。     

基于软件定义网络的服务器集群负载均衡技术研究

在当前的网络体系结构下,采用硬件系统实现服务器集群负载均衡存在着获取负载节点状态困难、流量导向方式复杂等制约因素,不利于提升服务器集群的伸缩性和服务性能。针对此问题,该文提出一种基于软件定义网络(SDN)的负载均衡机制(SDNLB)。该机制借助SDN具有的集中式控制和流量灵活调度优势,利用SNMP协议和OpenFlow协议对服务器的运行状态和全局网络负载信息进行实时监测,并通过权值计算的方式选择出权重最高的服务器作为流处理的目标服务器,在此基础上,采用最优转发路径算法进行流量调度,从而达到提高服务器集群的利用率与处理性能的目的。搭建了实验平台对SDNLB的性能进行仿真测试,实验结果表明:在相同的网络负载条件下,SDNLB与其他负载均衡算法相比,能够有效地降低服务器集群的负载,并能够显著提高网络吞吐量和带宽利用率,缩短流的完成时间和平均时延。