Performance Analysis of Applying Load Balancing Strategies on Different SDN Environments

Abstract

Software-Defined Network (SDN) is considered a breakthrough to the global network. It plays an important role in performance improvement and network optimization. SDN is a new mechanism for managing and designing networks rather than the current traditional network system which does not afford more services and higher data rates; therefore, we analyze the effect of applying load balancing techniques and its importance in different SDN environments. In this paper, we propose a dynamic server load balancing technique in SDN architecture. Hence, we implement a server Connection-based load balancing technique and evaluate its performance with a static Round-robin and Random-based in both mininet emulation environment and Raspberry Pi OpenFlow-enabled switch using Ryu OpenFlow controller. The performance of the proposed algorithm is compared with Round-robin and random distribution of clients' requests. The results show that the proposed technique achieves more reliability and higher resource utilization than the Round-robin and Random-based load balancing strategies. In addition, the proposed scheme exhibits more scalability and low-cost characteristics.Software-Defined Network (SDN) is considered a breakthrough to the global network. It plays an important role in performance improvement and network optimization. SDN is a new mechanism for managing and designing networks rather than the current traditional network system which does not afford more services and higher data rates; therefore, we analyze the effect of applying load balancing techniques and its importance in different SDN environments. In this paper, we propose a dynamic server load balancing technique in SDN architecture. Hence, we implement a server Connection-based load balancing technique and evaluate its performance with a static Round-robin and Random-based in both mininet emulation environment and Raspberry Pi OpenFlow-enabled switch using Ryu OpenFlow controller. The performance of the proposed algorithm is compared with Round-robin and random distribution of clients' requests. The results show that the proposed technique achieves more reliability and higher resource utilization than the Round-robin and Random-based load balancing strategies. In addition, the proposed scheme exhibits more scalability and low-cost characteristics.