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EASM: Efficiency-aware switch migration for balancing controller loads in software-defined networking

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Abstract

Distributed multi-controller deployment is a promising method to achieve a scalable and reliable control plane of Software-Defined Networking (SDN). However, it brings a new challenge for balancing loads on the distributed controllers as the network traffic dynamically changes. The unbalanced load distribution on the controllers will increase response delay for processing flows and reduce the controllers’ throughput. Switch migration is an effective approach to solve the problem. However, existing schemes focus only on the load balancing performance but ignore migration efficiency, which may result in high migration costs and unnecessary control overheads. This paper proposes Efficiency-Aware Switch Migration (EASM) to balance the controllers’ loads and improve migration efficiency. We introduce load difference matrix and trigger factor to measure load balancing on controllers. We also introduce the migration efficiency problem, which considers load balancing rate and migration cost simultaneously to optimally migrate switches. We propose EASM to efficiently solve to the problem. The simulation results show that EASM outperforms baseline schemes by reducing the controller response time by about 21.9%, improving the controller throughput by 30.4% on average, maintaining good load balancing rate, low migration costs and migration time, when the network scale changes.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the Project of National Network Cyberspace Security (Grant No. 2017YFB0803204), the National High-Tech Research and Development Program of China (863 Program) (Grant No. 2015AA016102), Foundation for Innovative Research Group of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.61521003). Foundation for the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61502530).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Digital Switching System Engineering & Technology Research Center, Zhengzhou, 450002, China

    Tao Hu, Julong Lan, Jianhui Zhang & Wei Zhao

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  1. Tao Hu
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  2. Julong Lan
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  3. Jianhui Zhang
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Correspondence to Tao Hu.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection: Special Issue on Software Defined Networking: Trends, Challenges and Prospective Smart Solutions

Guest Editors: Ahmed E. Kamal, Liangxiu Han, Sohail Jabbar, and Liu Lu

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Hu, T., Lan, J., Zhang, J. et al. EASM: Efficiency-aware switch migration for balancing controller loads in software-defined networking. Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl. 12, 452–464 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-018-0632-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-018-0632-6

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