On Reliability-optimized Controller Placement for Software-Defined Networks

By decoupling control plane and data plane,Software-Defined Networking(SDN) approach simplifies network management and speeds up network innovations.These benefits have led not only to prototypes,but also real SDN deployments.For wide-area SDN deployments,multiple controllers are often required,and the placement of these controllers becomes a particularly important task in the SDN context.This paper studies the problem of placing controllers in SDNs,so as to maximize the reliability of SDN control networks.We present a novel metric,called expected percentage of control path loss,to characterize the reliability of SDN control networks.We formulate the reliability-aware control placement problem,prove its NP-hardness,and examine several placement algorithms that can solve this problem.Through extensive simulations using real topologies,we show how the number of controllers and their placement influence the reliability of SDN control networks.Besides,we also found that,through strategic controller placement,the reliability of SDN control networks can be significantly improved without introducing unacceptable switch-to-controller latencies.

Autonomic QoS Management Mechanism in Software Defined Network

With the increase of network complexity,the flexibility of network control and management becomes a nontrivial problem.Both Software Defined Network(SDN) and Autonomic Network technologies are sophisticated technologies for the network control and management.These two technologies could be combined together to construct a software defined self-managing solution for the future network.An autonomic QoS management mechanism in Software Defined Network(AQSDN) is proposed in this paper.In AQSDN,the various QoS features can be configured autonomically in an OpenFlow switch through extending the OpenFlow and OF-Config protocols.Based on AQSDN,a novel packet context-aware QoS model(PCaQoS) is also introduced for improving the network QoS.PCaQoS takes packet context into account when packet is marked and managed into forwarding queues.The implementation of a video application's prototype which evaluates the self-configuration feature of the AQSDN and the enhancement ability of the PCaQoS is presented in order to validate this design.

On Generality of the Data Plane and Scalability of the Control Plane in Software-Defined Networking

The control and data planes are decoupled in software-defined networking(SDN),which enables both planes to evolve independently,and brings about many advantages such as high flexibility,programmability,and rapid implementation of new network protocols.However,in order to improve the scalability of the control plane at present,some control functionalities are added to the data plane,which is probably to impact on the generality of the data plane.The key challenge of adding control functionalities to the data plane is to strike a careful balance between the generality of the data plane and the scalability of the control plane.We propose some basic principles that both control and data planes should comply with,based on the evolutionary trend of SDN.Moreover,we take two approaches for reference according to the principles,viewed from the control messages in OpenFlow-based SDN.Our evaluations demonstrate that the approaches can maintain the generality of the data plane and improve the scalability of the control plane.

Achieving Consistence for Cross-Domain WAN Control in Software-Defined Networks

When applying Software-Defined Networks(SDN) to WANs,the SDN flexibility enables the cross-domain control to achieve a better control scalability.However,the control consistence is required by all the cross-domain services,to ensure the data plane configured in consensus for different domains.Such consistence process is complicated by potential failure and errors of WANs.In this paper,we propose a consistence layer to actively and passively snapshot the cross-domain control states,to reduce the complexities of service realizations.We implement the layer and evaluate performance in the PlanetLab testbed for the WAN emulation.The testbed conditions are extremely enlarged comparing to the real network.The results show its scalability,reliability and responsiveness in dealing with the control dynamics.In the normalized results,the active and passive snapshots are executed with the mean times of 1.873 s and 105 ms in135 controllers,indicating its readiness to be used in the real network.

A Game-Theoretic Approach to Elastic Control in Software-Defined Networking

Elastic control could balance the distributed control plane in Software-Defined Networking(SDN). Dynamic switch migration has been proposed to achieve it. However, existing schemes mainly focus on how to execute migration operation, but not why. This paper designs a decision-making mechanism based on zero-sum game theory to reelect a new controller as the master for migrated switches. It first chooses a switch for migration in the heavy controller which invites its neighbors as the game players to compete for the master role of this switch in the game-playing field(GPF) which is an occasional and loose domain for game-playing. Second, based on the concept of GPF, we design a decentralized strategy to play the game and determine which player as the final master. We implement it by extending the Open Flow protocol. Finally, numerical results demonstrate that our distributed strategy can approach elastic control plane with better performance.

A Stream Control Transmission Protocol Based OAM System of 3G Cellular Network

OAM (Operations, Administration and Maintenance) system is a very impo rtant component of 3G cellular network. In order to acquire overall managemen t, fast response and steady operation, an SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Prot ocol) based OAM, i.e., SOAM system was proposed. SOAM implements new characters of SCTP such as multi-stream, enforced SACK and heartbeat mechanism on its tran sport layer. These characters help SOAM decrease the message transmission delay and accelerate the link failure detection. Besides, a new component named SOAM agent was introduced to improve the operation efficiency of SOAM. The experim ental results prove the proposed SOAM system achieves better performance on sign aling transmission compared with conventional TCP based OAM system.

Towards a Dynamic Controller Scheduling-Timing Problem in Software-Defined Networking

Controller vulnerabilities allow malicious actors to disrupt or hijack the Software-Defined Networking. Traditionally, it is static mappings between the control plane and data plane. Adversaries have plenty of time to exploit the controller's vulnerabilities and launch attacks wisely. We tend to believe that dynamically altering such static mappings is a promising approach to alleviate this issue, since a moving target is difficult to be compromised even by skilled adversaries. It is critical to determine the right time to conduct scheduling and to balance the overhead afforded and the security levels guaranteed. Little previous work has been done to investigate the economical time in dynamic-scheduling controllers. In this paper, we take the first step to both theoretically and experimentally study the scheduling-timing problem in dynamic control plane. We model this problem as a renewal reward process and propose an optimal algorithm in deciding the right time to schedule with the objective of minimizing the long-term loss rate. In our experiments, simulations based on real network attack datasets are conducted and we demonstrate that our proposed algorithm outperforms given scheduling schemes.

The Design and Realization of Network Remote Control Based on Embedded Systems

In order to achieve remote control problems for the intelligent home appliances, The paper presents a realization method through the Internet and GSM remote to control appliances of smart home, and given circuit. And described in detail the hardware and software design of smart home appliances and their control method. Test results show that the system is stable and reliable.

A research on an energy-saving software for pumping units based on FNN intelligent control

An energy-saving scheme for pumping units via intermission start-stop performance is proposed. Because of the complexity of the oil extraction process, Fuzzy Neural Network (FNN) intelligent control is adopted. The structure of the Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy neural network model is introduced and modified. FNNs are trained with sample information from oil fields and expert knowledge. Finally, pumping unit energy-saving FNN software, which cuts down power costs substantially, is presented.

Auto Distribution of Tag Table in P2P Control System

In control system, tag table is like a dictionary mapping tagname to address. Therefore, applications on workstation may use tagname to access different data in system. Normally tag table generated by configuration software will transfer to other workstation in system manually after system configuration, which is inconvenient and failible. The development of peer-to-peer （P2P） network technology and the realization of control system based on P2P network make the auto distn＇bution of tag table possible. In this paper based on file sharing technology the presented method realizes the auto distn＇bution of tag table.

On the feasibility and efficacy of control traffic protection in software-defined networks

Software Defined Networking （SDN） is an emerging networking paradigm that assumes a logically centralized control plane separated from the data plane. Despite all its advantages, separating the control and data planes introduces new challenges regarding resilient communications between the two. That is, disconnec- tions between switches and their controllers could result in substantial packet loss and performance degradation. This paper addresses this challenge by studying the issue of control traffic protection in SDNs with arbitrary numbers of controllers. Specifically, we propose a control traffic protection scheme that combines both local rerouting and constrained reverse path forwarding protections, through which switches can locally react to fail- ures and redirect the control traffic using standby backup forwarding options. Our goal is then to find a set of primary routes for control traffic, called protected control network, where as many switches as possible can benefit from the proposed protection scheme. We formulate the protected control network problem, prove its NP-hardness, and develop an algorithm that reconciles proteetability and performance （e.g., switch-to-control latency）. Through extensive simulations based on real topologies, we show that our approach significantly im- proves protectability of control traffic. The results should help further the process of deploying SDN in real-world networks.