Integrating Service Function Chain Management into Software Defined Network Controller

Abstract

Middleboxes play a crucial role in networks in the context of performance and security aspects. Large scale networks such as data center networks employ a wide range of middleboxes to service application traffic. Handling of dynamic traffic by means of static middlebox configurations is a complex task. To this end, a combination of Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks offer promising approaches to enable provisioning and chaining of network functions to create service function chains dynamically, in response to the changing application workload and policies. These paradigms together enable elastic and scalable provisioning of service function chains which are programmable at a high, abstract level. This opens new opportunities for co-ordinated working of cloud manager and Software Defined Network controller to jointly manage service function instances as flexibly as the application Virtual Machines, based on the temporal network characteristics of the data center network. On the other hand, the practical implementation of such a controller requires overcoming various hurdles. In this paper we enumerate and motivate the need for such a setup in large scale data center networks followed by the challenges in realizing it. As a proof of concept we realize such a setup using simulation environment and present some early results on the effect on Software Defined Network controller design.