Qualitative Analysis of Hybrid Flow Installation Mechanism in Software Defined Networks (SDN)

Abstract

Software Define Networking (SDN) is a new technology and in recent years it has been developed in an amazing amount. This paper addresses Dijkstra routing algorithm for routing SDN traffic and flow installation mechanism in OvS switches. Programmable networking is the main base of SDN which helps in dynamic network management because a dynamic networking is only possible when the data and control planes are separate. In SDN the control plane resides in SDN Controller, which has the responsibility of routing the traffic and installation of flows on data plane. Whenever a flow enters into a SDN switch, flow tables are generated for those flows and installed at data plane from control plane. These flows have their own properties because of their relevant protocols which are attached to them. Dijkstra is one those protocols which provides the shortest path to the packet. A flow consists of a matching pattern, actions, and counter. Based on the respective flow, data communication takes place. This project investigates three kinds of flow installation mechanisms, reactive, proactive, hybrid and also provides an extension of Dijkstra algorithm in which Dijkstra algorithm also consider the amount of traffic on a link to avoid congestion while selecting the path for a packet. Based on these three flow installation mechanisms and improved Dijkstra algorithm we have analyzed the performance of SDN by using different performance metrics. We have used Mininet and POX controller to evaluate the performance analysis in Ubuntu and Windows-based environments. Finally, we have drawn conclusions.