POX Controller Research Articles

Cloud Based Smart City Services for Industrial Internet of Things in Software-Defined Networking

The network session constraints for Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications are different and challenging. These constraints necessitates a high level of reconfigurability, so that the system can assess the impact of an event and adjust the network effectively. Software Defined Networking (SDN) in contrast to existing networks segregates the control and data plane to support network configuration which is programmable with smart cities requirement that shows the highest impact on the system but faces the problem of reliability. To address this issue, the SDN-IIoT based load balancing algorithm is proposed in this article and it is not application specific.Quality of service (QoS) aware architecture i.e., SDN-IIoT load balancing scheme is proposed and it deals with load on the servers. Huge load on the servers, makes them vulnerable to halt the system and hence leads to faults which creates the reliability problem for real time applications. In this article, load is migrated from one server to another server, if load on one server is more than threshold value. Load distribution has made the proposed scheme more reliable than already existing schemes. Further, the topology used for the implementation has been designed using POX controller and the results has been evaluated using Mininet emulator with its support in python programming. Lastly, the performance is evaluated based on the various Quality of Service (QoS) metrics; data transmission, response time and CPU utilization which shows that the proposed algorithm has shown 10% improvement over the existing LBBSRT, Random, Round-robin, Heuristic algorithms.

Flow Installation Mechanisms in SDN

Software Defined Networking (SDN) has developed tremendously in the recent years. This paper addresses different flow installation mechanisms. The idea of a programmable network which is the foundation of SDN ensures dynamic network management by separating the control plane from data and management planes. In SDN the control plane resides in SDN Controller, which is responsible for the installation of flows on the data plane. Whenever a flow enters into an SDN switch, flow tables are generated for those flows and installed at data plane from the control plane. These flows have their own properties because of their relevant protocols which are attached to them. A flow consists of a matching pattern, actions, and counter. Based on the respective flow, data communication takes place. This paper investigates three kinds of flow installation mechanisms, reactive, proactive and hybrid. Based on these three flow installation mechanisms, we have analysed the performance of SDN by using different performance metrics. We have used the Mininet and POX controller to evaluate the performance analysis in Ubuntu and Windows-based environments. Finally, we have drawn conclusions

Security analysis of SDN controller-based DHCP services and attack mitigation with DHCPguard

Software defined networking (SDN) presents opportunities for improving network management, mainly thanks to the centralized controller separated from forwarding devices. On the other hand, security in SDN is a complicated issue: SDN both inherits vulnerabilities from traditional networks through common protocols and introduces new problems due to the risks associated with softwarization. Dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) is an essential protocol in SDNs as well and the security risks of DHCP also menace SDNs. In this study, we have analyzed the security of the built-in DHCP services on three popular SDN controllers: POX, ONOS and Floodlight. Our results indicate that they are vulnerable to starvation attacks, and DHCP discovery message floods can also be used to launch denial-of-service attacks, slowing down networks and overloading controllers. To counter these issues, we examined state-of-the-art DHCP security methodologies and assessed their applicability to the built-in DHCP servers of SDN controllers. Considering our assessment, we have designed and implemented a DHCP security module on the POX controller, DHCPguard, utilizing DHCP snooping, rate limiting, and IP pool recovery functions. Our findings show that DHCPguard successfully blocks malicious DHCP messages, recovers the IP address pool, and alleviates the negative effects of DHCP related attacks on the network without significant overhead. DHCPguard is able to increase throughput by up to 94% and decrease CPU usage by up to 92% compared to plain POX under DHCP attack scenarios performed on simple and complex topologies.

An efficient mechanism to detect and mitigate an ARP spoofing attack in software-defined networks

The work focuses on software-defined network security, as it was always one of these foremost critical concerns due to the centralized nature in SDN architecture where many serious attacks in traditional networks still appear in SDN networks such as ARP spoofing attack despite many existing security algorithms, methods and systems. In this work, we proposed a new approach to secure SDN from an ARP poisoning attack. The new solution extends the controller with a new module that uses a new algorithm to detect and mitigate the ARP spoofing attacks according to three states of each host in the network. The new mechanism involves the DHCP and manual assignment of IP addresses using three classes to classify the hosts according to their situations in the network. The CHT helps to set the host in an intermediate state between verifying and banning and detect the attack according to the next step of the host. The proposed mechanism was tested successfully in a simulated environment using Mininet and POX controller. The solution was effectively able to accomplish the objective for which it was built, with a limited overhead on the network. This proposed solution neither has an extra overload in the network, nor requires any changes in the infrastructure or additional hardware to install. According to the experiment results of this solution, the average time to detect the ARP spoofing attack is about 11 ms, with minor overhead on the controller CPU.

Managing Internet of Things based traffic using Software Defined Networking

The current internet architecture cannot manage the massive data volumes produced by the smart IoT-based healthcare systems. Very recently, the idea of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has surfaced to resolve the issues related to networking. The incorporation of SDN technology in IoT-based healthcare systems can possibly solve the existing quality of service and data management issues. Furthermore, the IoT-based healthcare system can attain enhanced Quality of Service (QoS) through the employment of such schemes that use shortest-path routing algorithms and offer higher bandwidth to lesser delay paths as per the QoS requirements. In this study, the SDN technology is integrated with IoT-based healthcare systems, and the delay is reduced for delay-sensitive applications by using the Bellman-Ford algorithm. The proposed scheme is deployed using the POX controller and can effectively handle the existing QoS issues in the IoT healthcare systems. The simulation results of the proposed scheme show a clear drop in delay values in comparison to the benchmark scheme.

Smart Flow Steering Agent for End-to-End Delay Improvement in Software-Defined Networks

To ensure fault tolerance and distributed management, distributed protocols are employed as one of the major architectural concepts underlying the Internet. However, inefficiency, instability and fragility could be potentially overcome with the help of the novel networking architecture called software-defined networking (SDN). The main property of this architecture is the separation of the control and data planes. To reduce congestion and thus improve latency and throughput, there must be homogeneous distribution of the traffic load over the different network paths. This paper presents a smart flow steering agent (SFSA) for data flow routing based on current network conditions. To enhance throughput and minimize latency, the SFSA distributes network traffic to suitable paths, in addition to supervising link and path loads. A scenario with a minimum spanning tree (MST) routing algorithm and another with open shortest path first (OSPF) routing algorithms were employed to assess the SFSA. By comparison, to these two routing algorithms, the suggested SFSA strategy determined a reduction of 2% in packets dropped ratio (PDR), a reduction of 15-45% in end-to-end delay according to the traffic produced, as well as a reduction of 23% in round trip time (RTT). The Mininet emulator and POX controller were employed to conduct the simulation. Another advantage of the SFSA over the MST and OSPF is that its implementation and recovery time do not exhibit fluctuations. The smart flow steering agent will open a new horizon for deploying new smart agents in SDN that enhance network programmability and management.

A Comparative Performance Analysis for Static and Dynamic Load Balancing Techniques in Software Defined Network Environment

Traditional load balancer suffers from inflexibility, high cost and the difficulty to manage the network. Software-Defined Network (SDN) gives a promising solution for traditional load balancer limitations through enabling programmability and centralized control over the network, which offers inexpensive and scalable solutions. This paper investigates the impact of increasing the workload requests from 0 up to 180 requests per second (req/sec) in order to explore average network throughput under the deployment of static as well as dynamic load balancing algorithms by the POX controller. The study was based on the utilization of HTTPerf based on the fact that it provides a flexible facility for the generation of various HTTP workloads as well for the measurement of server performance. Our experiments revealed that as the number of requests increases the throughput increases as well. Dynamic least bandwidth-based load balance scheme has shown a remarkable improvement in terms of average network throughput up to 8%, 3.3% and 2.56 %, as compared with static load balancing schemes like random, round-robin and weighted round-robin. However, Dynamic least bandwidth recorded a slight ineffective improvement less than 1 % was recorded when a comparison was carried out dynamic least connections, this directed us to the fact that their performance was almost the same. Based on what dynamic least bandwidth scheme has achieved in terms of average network throughput, more efforts should be driven by the researchers on algorithm development like introducing static weight for each server as well as the application of the algorithm on several POX controllers to avoid a single point of failure.

Defense mechanisms against DDoS attack based on entropy in SDN-cloud using POX controller

Software defined networks (SDNs) in a combination of cloud computing are the best amalgamation for the researchers and industry. Though, these unique networking paradigms have been accepted world widely, they are hampered by various security threats. Among all the threats, the attack, Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) is the most severe attack into the SDN-Cloud. In spite of, so many developments in tools and technology, it is still hard to detect the DDoS attack. Therefore, till now there is no efficient solution to cope up with this problem. In our research work, we proposed a defensive mechanism for DDoS attacks that is based on variations in entropy between DDoS attack and a normal traffic with a low computational overhead. We also proposed a mitigation technique to reduce the severity of the attack. On comparing with the existing DDoS mechanisms, our proposed method holds three advantages as (i) detection rate is high, (ii) false positive rate is low and (iii) the mitigation ability. Simulations are carried out in mininet emulator with POX controller and open flow switches at different attack strength. Our proposed mechanism has achieved a high detection rate with 98.2% over variable attack rate along with 0.04% false positive rate.

Implementing a Software Load Balancer with a Genetic Algorithm

In the context of network evolution, concepts like Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) appeared on the market. Network virtualization permits the implementation of routers, switches and load balancers in software and separation of control plane and data plane brings easier configuration, implementation and scalability. The monolithic design of traditional network devices can be changed by implementing new algorithms which will improve the overall system performance. An example is our Software Load Balancer with a Genetic Algorithm. The code written in Python is functional through the POX Controller and the advantages of evolutionary algorithms make this implementation an innovative solution for dynamically modified topologies.

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

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.

An Autonomic Software Defined Network (SDN) Architecture With Performance Improvement Considering

SDN makes the network programmable, agile, and flexible with data and control traffic separating. This architecture consists of three layers which are application, control and data. The aim of our research is concentrated on the control layer to improve the performance of the network in an autonomic manner. In the first step, we have categorized the performance improvement researches based on network performance improvement solutions proposed in the recent papers. This performance improvement solution clustering is one of our contributions to our paper. The significant contribution in this paper is a novel autonomic SDN-based architecture to ameliorate the performance metrics including blocking probability (BP), delay, jitter, packet loss rate (PLR), and path utilization. Our SDN-based autonomic system consists of three layers (data, autonomic control, and Route learning) to separate the traffics based on deep neural networks (DNN) and to route the flows with the greedy algorithm. The autonomic SDN-based architecture which has proposed in this paper makes better network performance metrics dynamically. Our proposed autonomic architecture will be developed in the POX controller which has developed by python. Mininet is used for simulation and the results are compared with the commonly used SDN named pure SDN in this article. The simulation results show that our structure works better in a full-mesh topology and improves the performance metrics simultaneously. The average performance is improved by about %2.5 in comparison with pure SDN architecture based on the Area Under Curve (AUC) of network performance.

POX Controller and Open Flow Performance Evaluation in Software Defined Networks (SDN) Using Mininet Emulator

Growing popularity of Internet demands for the agility as well as the flexibility of computer networks. Traditional networking system is unable to satisfy recent computing needs. Proprietary devices configured manually create an error-prone situation in addition they are incapable to fully utilize the capability of physical network infrastructure. This has resulted in the paradigm shift in the networking industry and it is known as Software defined networking. Advantages such as programmability, task virtualization and easy management of the network can be provided by employing SDN platform, on the other hand POX is defined as a Python based open source OpenFlow SDN Controller mainly used for faster development and prototyping of new network applications basically comes pre-installed with the mininet virtual machine. POX controller can turn dumb OpenFlow devices into hub, switch, load balancer and firewall devices. In this paper Performance metrics such as service Delay, utilized bandwidth, received packets and bytes were measured and recorded using network monitoring tools like iperf and D-ITG in order to analyze the functionality of the POX controller as well as to evaluate the operation performance of POX controller for SDN environment. The results of this research were the recommendation of using POX controller in for rapid development and prototyping of network control systems as well as being the framework for the interaction with Open Flow switches.

ISDSDN: Mitigating SYN Flood Attacks in Software Defined Networks

Software defined networking (SDN) has emerged over the past few years as a novel networking technology that enables fast and easy network management. Separating the control plane and the data plane in SDNs allows for dynamic network management, implementation of new applications, and implementing network specific functions in software. This paper addresses the problem of SYN flood attacks in SDNs which are considered among the most challenging threats because their effect exceeds the targeted end system to the controller and TCAM of OpenFlow switches. These attacks exploit the three-way handshaking connection establishment mechanism in TCP, where attackers overwhelm the victim machine with flood of spoofed SYN packets resulting in a large number of half-open connections that would never complete. Therefore, degrading the performance of the controller and populating OpenFlow switches’ TCAMs with spoofed entries. In this paper, we propose ISDSDN, a mechanism for SYN flood attack mitigation in software defined networks. The proposed mechanism adopts the idea of intentional dropping to distinguish between legitimate and attack SYN packets in the context of software defined networks. ISDSDN is implemented as an extension module of POX controller and is evaluated under different attack scenarios. Performance evaluation shows that the proposed mechanism is very effective in defending against SYN flood attacks.

Software Defined Networks using Mininet

A software defined network (SDN) is combined with centralized management by providing separation of the network, data and control planes. Different cloud computing environments, enterprise data centers and service providers are using this important feature. By implementing software defined data centers. Here in this paper we have used Mininet to demonstrate the applicability of SDN for different scalability. We study the performance of two SDN controllers – RYU and POX, that are implemented in Python using Mininet and D-ITG, Distributed Internet Traffic Generator. During this study we have used two network topologies, single and linear. The performance parameters used are maximum delay, average jitter, average bitrate. Experimental results demonstrated that the linear topology with RYU controller performs better as compared to single topology with POX controller for different network sizes.

Analysing the Performance of SDN/OpenFlow Controllers in VANET

One of the key enablers of the evolving 5G technology are Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) and Software Defined Networking (SDN). The development of next generation intelligent vehicular networks includes integration of SDN in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs). Researchers have focused on the development of the integrated technology including architecture and benefits of SDN based VANET services. In this paper we have simulated the Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) using Mininet-wifi. The VANET is incorporated with SDN controller. The performance is evaluated by varying the speed of vehicles. We have evaluated the performance in two ways: performance evaluation of V2V communication in same RSU and performance evaluation of V2V communication from different RSU. We have evaluated the proposed system for POX and RYU SDN OpenFlow controllers. As demonstrated in the results the RYU controller of SDN performs better as compared to POX controller in terms of average delay and throughput.

Software Defined Network of Video Surveillance System Based on Enhanced Routing Algorithms

Software Defined Network (SDN) is a new technology that separate the ‎control plane from the data plane. SDN provides a choice in automation and ‎programmability faster than traditional network. It supports the ‎Quality of Service (QoS) for video surveillance application. One of most ‎significant issues in video surveillance is how to find the best path for routing the packets ‎between the source (IP cameras) and destination (monitoring center). The ‎video surveillance system requires fast transmission and reliable delivery ‎and high QoS. To improve the QoS and to achieve the optimal path, the ‎SDN architecture is used in this paper. In addition, different routing algorithms are ‎used with different steps. First, we evaluate the video transmission over the SDN with ‎Bellman Ford algorithm. Then, because the limitation of Bellman ford ‎algorithm, the Dijkstra algorithm is used to change the path when a congestion occurs. Furthermore, the Dijkstra algorithm is used with two ‎controllers to reduce the time consumed by the SDN controller. ‎ POX and Pyretic SDN controllers are used such that POX controller is ‎responsible for the network monitoring, while Pyretic controller is responsible for the ‎routing algorithm and path selection. Finally, a modified Dijkstra algorithm is further proposed and evaluated with two ‎controllers to enhance the performance. The results show that the modified Dijkstra algorithm outperformed the other approaches in the aspect of QoS parameters.

Application-Aware Firewall Mechanism for Software Defined Networks

Software-Defined-Networking (SDN) has been recently arising as a new technology in the IT industry. It is a network architecture that hopes to provide better solutions to most of the constraints in contemporary networks. SDN is a centralized control architecture for networking in which the control plane is separated from the data plane, the network services are abstracted from the underlying forwarding devices, and the network’s intelligence is centralized in a software-based directly-programmed device called a controller. These features of SDN provide more flexible, programmable and innovative network’s architecture. However, they may pose new vulnerabilities and may lead to new security problems. In this paper, we propose the application-aware firewall mechanism for SDN, which can be implemented as an extension to the network’s controller. In order to provide more control and visibility in applications running over the network, the system is able to detect network applications that may at some point affect network’s performance, and it is capable to dynamically enforce constraint rules on applications. The firewall architecture is designed as four cooperating modules: the Main Module, the Filtering Module, the Application Identification Module, and the Security-Enforcement Module. The proposed mechanism checks the network traffic at the network, transport, and application levels, and installs appropriate security instructions down into the network. The proposed solution features were implemented and tested using a Python-based POX controller, and the network topology was built using Mininet emulation tool.

A SDN-based active measurement method to traffic QoS sensing for smart network access

Power communication network is very important for the management of the power system. With the exponential growth of the power equipment and the drastic increase in the amount of power monitoring data, there is a huge challenge for the smart network access of the power communication network. Then, software defined network (SDN) which is flexible and scalable is suitable for the power communication network. In order to increase the high quality of service (QoS) of provided communication for users, the traffic QoS sensing is the key of the smart network access in the power communication network. Then, we propose a SDN-Based active measurement method to measure the evaluation parameters of the smart network access in the power communication network. Firstly, we introduce the instructions provided by the OpenFlow protocol, which can be used to collect statistics from OpenFlow switches. Secondly, we define the parameters that should be measured in the power communication network to evaluate the performance of the network and give the corresponding measurement method with them. Next, we proposed a SDN-based active measurement algorithm that updates its measurement interval based on the measurement throughput changes. Finally, we built a simulation platform using the Mininet simulator and the POX controller to verify the proposed measurement method, and the simulation results show the accuracy of our proposed method and the measurement load of our proposed method are both better than that of Polling measurement methods.

Edge-Computing with Graph Computation: A Novel Mechanism to Handle Network Intrusion and Address Spoofing in SDN

Software Defined Networking (SDN) being an emerging network control model is widely recognized as a control and management platform. This model provides efficient techniques to control and manage the enterprise network. Another emerging paradigm is edge computing in which data processing is performed at the edges of the network instead of a central controller. This data processing at the edge nodes reduces the latency and bandwidth requirements. In SDN, the controller is a single point of failure. Several security issues related to the traditional network can be solved by using SDN central management and control. Address Spoofing and Network Intrusion are the most common attacks. These attacks severely degrade performance and security. We propose an edge computing-based mechanism that automatically detects and mitigates those attacks. In this mechanism, an edge system gets the network topology from the controller and the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) traffic is directed to it for further analysis. As such, the controller is saved from unnecessary processing related to addressing translation. We propose a graph computation based method to identify the location of an attacker or intruder by implementing a graph difference method. By using the correct location information, the exact attacker or intruder is blocked, while the legitimate users get access to the network resources. The proposed mechanism is evaluated in a Mininet simulator and a POX controller. The results show that it improves system performance in terms of attack mitigation time, attack detection time, and bandwidth requirements.

Recovery Method for Disasters of Network Servers by Using POX controller in Software defined Networks.

The devices we used to automation made up of electric bunch called IoT devices so the more complex task is to manage them effectively. If the devices cannot connect or share anything correctly then these devices will be considered as useless. So the diversity of these devices will be increase the chance of survival. When we talk about the disaster the main difference between networks software and hardware needed to be overcome . for this we have to control the data traffic smartly so the software defined networks make this thing possible to give more programmability because in SDN the data plane is separated from control plane. When IoT devices got disconnected because of internet lack at that time these devices have to respond quickly. So for this purpose, software defined networks used to search another path for information transfer just to get that connection back we can say SDN provides reroute based on the routing information and routing flows they have already and they also have better understanding of pathways for communication. So in this paper our main focus is on this problem that will occur because of disaster and we intend to recover server and also multiple servers from this disaster of link failure , traffic engineering , power outage and rerouting of packets. For this we proposed a systematic approach for recovering these servers from disaster by using software defined networks. The separation of control plane from data plane provides programmability and also make the system flexible for getting back the connection soon. So for this recovery from disaster we are going to use OpenFlow protocol used by SDN and we using Mininet to implementation. The controller will be POX and also we are using Lipsflow mapping for disaster management and recovery.