Threshold-Based Software-Defined Networking(SDN)Solution for Healthcare Systems against Intrusion Attacks

The healthcare sector holds valuable and sensitive data.The amount of this data and the need to handle,exchange,and protect it,has been increasing at a fast pace.Due to their nature,software-defined networks(SDNs)are widely used in healthcare systems,as they ensure effective resource utilization,safety,great network management,and monitoring.In this sector,due to the value of thedata,SDNs faceamajor challengeposed byawide range of attacks,such as distributed denial of service(DDoS)and probe attacks.These attacks reduce network performance,causing the degradation of different key performance indicators(KPIs)or,in the worst cases,a network failure which can threaten human lives.This can be significant,especially with the current expansion of portable healthcare that supports mobile and wireless devices for what is called mobile health,or m-health.In this study,we examine the effectiveness of using SDNs for defense against DDoS,as well as their effects on different network KPIs under various scenarios.We propose a threshold-based DDoS classifier(TBDC)technique to classify DDoS attacks in healthcare SDNs,aiming to block traffic considered a hazard in the form of a DDoS attack.We then evaluate the accuracy and performance of the proposed TBDC approach.Our technique shows outstanding performance,increasing the mean throughput by 190.3%,reducing the mean delay by 95%,and reducing packet loss by 99.7%relative to normal,with DDoS attack traffic.

Software defined satellite networks:A survey

In recent years,satellite networks have been proposed as an essential part of next-generation mobile communication systems.Software defined networking techniques are introduced in satellite networks to handle the growing challenges induced by time-varying topology,intermittent inter-satellite link and dramatically increased satellite constellation size.This survey covers the latest progress of software defined satellite networks,including key techniques,existing solutions,challenges,opportunities,and simulation tools.To the best of our knowledge,this paper is the most comprehensive survey that covers the latest progress of software defined satellite networks.An open GitHub repository is further created where the latest papers on this topic will be tracked and updated periodically.Compared with these existing surveys,this survey contributes from three aspects:(1)an up-to-date SDN-oriented review for the latest progress of key techniques and solutions in software defined satellite networks;(2)an inspiring summary of existing challenges,new research opportunities and publicly available simulation tools for follow-up studies;(3)an effort of building a public repository to track new results.

Deployment Strategy for Multiple Controllers Based on the Aviation On-Board Software-Defined Data Link Network

In light of the escalating demand and intricacy of services in contemporary terrestrial,maritime,and aerial combat operations,there is a compelling need for enhanced service quality and efficiency in airborne cluster communication networks.Software-Defined Networking(SDN)proffers a viable solution for the multifaceted task of cooperative communication transmission and management across different operational domains within complex combat contexts,due to its intrinsic ability to flexibly allocate and centrally administer network resources.This study pivots around the optimization of SDN controller deployment within airborne data link clusters.A collaborative multi-controller architecture predicated on airborne data link clusters is thus proposed.Within this architectural framework,the controller deployment issue is reframed as a two-fold problem:subdomain partition-ing and central interaction node selection.We advocate a subdomain segmentation approach grounded in node value ranking(NDVR)and a central interaction node selection methodology predicated on an enhanced Artificial Fish Swarm Algorithm(AFSA).The advanced NDVR-AFSA(Node value ranking-Improved artificial fish swarm algorithm)algorithm makes use of a chaos algorithm for population initialization,boosting population diversity and circumventing premature algorithm convergence.By the integration of adaptive strategies and incorporation of the genetic algorithm’s crossover and mutation operations,the algorithm’s search range adaptability is enhanced,thereby increasing the possibility of obtaining globally optimal solutions,while concurrently augmenting cluster reliability.The simulation results verify the advantages of the NDVR-IAFSA algorithm,achieve a better load balancing effect,improve the reliability of aviation data link cluster,and significantly reduce the average propagation delay and disconnection rate,respectively,by 12.8%and 11.7%.This shows that the optimization scheme has important significance in practical application,and can meet the high requirements of modern sea,land,and air operations to aviation airborne communication networks.

A Novel Load Balancing Strategy of Software-Defined Cloud/Fog Networking in the Internet of Vehicles

The Internet of Vehicles(IoV)has been widely researched in recent years,and cloud computing has been one of the key technologies in the IoV.Although cloud computing provides high performance compute,storage and networking services,the IoV still suffers with high processing latency,less mobility support and location awareness.In this paper,we integrate fog computing and software defined networking(SDN) to address those problems.Fog computing extends computing and storing to the edge of the network,which could decrease latency remarkably in addition to enable mobility support and location awareness.Meanwhile,SDN provides flexible centralized control and global knowledge to the network.In order to apply the software defined cloud/fog networking(SDCFN) architecture in the IoV effectively,we propose a novel SDN-based modified constrained optimization particle swarm optimization(MPSO-CO) algorithm which uses the reverse of the flight of mutation particles and linear decrease inertia weight to enhance the performance of constrained optimization particle swarm optimization(PSO-CO).The simulation results indicate that the SDN-based MPSO-CO algorithm could effectively decrease the latency and improve the quality of service(QoS) in the SDCFN architecture.

Blockchain-Based Secure Distributed Control for Software Defined Optical Networking

Software defined optical networking(SDON)is a critical technology for the next generation network with the advantages of programmable control and etc.As one of the key issues of SDON,the security of control plane has also received extensive attention,especially in certain network scenarios with high security requirement.Due to the existence of vulnerabilities and heavy overhead,the existing firewalls and distributed control technologies cannot solve the control plane security problem well.In this paper,we propose a distributed control architecture for SDON using the blockchain technique(BlockCtrl).The proposed BlockCtrl model introduces the advantages of blockchain into SDON to achieve a high-efficiency fault tolerant control.We have evaluated the performance of our proposed architecture and compared it to the existing models with respect to various metrics including processing rate,recovery latency and etc.The numerical results show that the BlockCtrl is capable of attacks detection and fault tolerant control in SDON with high performance on resource utilization and service correlation.

A Survey: Typical Security Issues of Software-Defined Networking

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has been a hot topic for future network development, which implements the different layers of control plane and data plane respectively. Despite providing high openness and programmability, the “three-layer two-interface” architecture of SDN changes the traditional network and increases the network attack nodes, which results in new security issues. In this paper, we firstly introduced the background, architecture and working process of SDN. Secondly, we summarized and analyzed the typical security issues from north to south: application layer, northbound interface, control layer, southbound interface and data layer. Another contribution is to review and analyze the existing solutions and latest research progress of each layer, mainly including: authorized authentication module, application isolation, DoS/DDoS defense, multi-controller deployment and flow rule consistency detection. Finally, a conclusion about the future works of SDN security and an idealized global security architecture is proposed.

A Dormant Multi-Controller Model for Software Defined Networking

In order to improve the scalability and reliability of Software Defined Networking(SDN),many studies use multiple controllers to constitute logically centralized control plane to provide load balancing and fail over.In this paper,we develop a flexible dormant multi-controller model based on the centralized multi-controller architecture.The dormant multi-controller model allows part of controllers to enter the dormant state under light traffic condition for saving system cost.Meanwhile,through queueing analysis,various performance measures of the system can be obtained.Moreover,we analyze the real traffic of China Education Network and use the results as the parameters of computer simulation and verify the effects of parameters on the system characteristics.Finally,a total expected cost function is established,and genetic algorithm is employed to find the optimal values of various parameters to minimize system cost for the deployment decision making.

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.

EARS: Intelligence-Driven Experiential Network Architecture for Automatic Routing in Software-Defined Networking

Software-Defined Networking(SDN)adapts logically-centralized control by decoupling control plane from data plane and provides the efficient use of network resources.However,due to the limitation of traditional routing strategies relying on manual configuration,SDN may suffer from link congestion and inefficient bandwidth allocation among flows,which could degrade network performance significantly.In this paper,we propose EARS,an intelligence-driven experiential network architecture for automatic routing.EARS adapts deep reinforcement learning(DRL)to simulate the human methods of learning experiential knowledge,employs the closed-loop network control mechanism incorporating with network monitoring technologies to realize the interaction with network environment.The proposed EARS can learn to make better control decision from its own experience by interacting with network environment and optimize the network intelligently by adjusting services and resources offered based on network requirements and environmental conditions.Under the network architecture,we design the network utility function with throughput and delay awareness,differentiate flows based on their size characteristics,and design a DDPGbased automatic routing algorithm as DRL decision brain to find the near-optimal paths for mice and elephant flows.To validate the network architecture,we implement it on a real network environment.Extensive simulation results show that EARS significantly improve the network throughput and reduces the average packet delay in comparison with baseline schemes(e.g.OSPF,ECMP).

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.

Dynamic Threshold-Based Approach to Detect Low-Rate DDoS Attacks on Software-Defined Networking Controller

The emergence of a new network architecture,known as Software Defined Networking(SDN),in the last two decades has overcome some drawbacks of traditional networks in terms of performance,scalability,reliability,security,and network management.However,the SDN is vulnerable to security threats that target its controller,such as low-rate Distributed Denial of Service(DDoS)attacks,The low-rate DDoS attack is one of the most prevalent attacks that poses a severe threat to SDN network security because the controller is a vital architecture component.Therefore,there is an urgent need to propose a detection approach for this type of attack with a high detection rate and low false-positive rates.Thus,this paper proposes an approach to detect low-rate DDoS attacks on the SDN controller by adapting a dynamic threshold.The proposed approach has been evaluated using four simulation scenarios covering a combination of low-rate DDoS attacks against the SDN controller involving(i)a single host attack targeting a single victim;(ii)a single host attack targeting multiple victims;(iii)multiple hosts attack targeting a single victim;and(iv)multiple hosts attack targeting multiple victims.The proposed approach’s average detection rates are 96.65%,91.83%,96.17%,and 95.33%for the above scenarios,respectively;and its average false-positive rates are 3.33%,8.17%,3.83%,and 4.67%for similar scenarios,respectively.The comparison between the proposed approach and two existing approaches showed that it outperformed them in both categories.

Real-Time Timing Channel Detection in a Software-Defined Networking Virtual Environment

Despite extensive research, timing channels (TCs) are still known as a principal category of threats that aim to leak and transmit information by perturbing the timing or ordering of events. Existing TC detection approaches use either signature-based approaches to detect known TCs or anomaly-based approach by modeling the legitimate network traffic in order to detect unknown TCs. Un-fortunately, in a software-defined networking (SDN) environment, most existing TC detection approaches would fail due to factors such as volatile network traffic, imprecise timekeeping mechanisms, and dynamic network topology. Furthermore, stealthy TCs can be designed to mimic the legitimate traffic pattern and thus evade anomalous TC detection. In this paper, we overcome the above challenges by presenting a novel framework that harnesses the advantages of elastic re-sources in the cloud. In particular, our framework dynamically configures SDN to enable/disable differential analysis against outbound network flows of different virtual machines (VMs). Our framework is tightly coupled with a new metric that first decomposes the timing data of network flows into a number of using the discrete wavelet-based multi-resolution transform (DWMT). It then applies the Kullback-Leibler divergence (KLD) to measure the variance among flow pairs. The appealing feature of our approach is that, compared with the existing anomaly detection approaches, it can detect most existing and some new stealthy TCs without legitimate traffic for modeling, even with the presence of noise and imprecise timekeeping mechanism in an SDN virtual environment. We implement our framework as a prototype system, OBSERVER, which can be dynamically deployed in an SDN environment. Empirical evaluation shows that our approach can efficiently detect TCs with a higher detection rate, lower latency, and negligible performance overhead compared to existing approaches.

A Software-Defined Approach to IoT Networking

It is foreseen that the Internet of Things (IoT) will comprise billions of connected devices, and this will make the provi?sioning and operation of some IoT connectivity services more challenging. Indeed, IoT services are very different from lega?cy Internet services because of their dimensioning figures and also because IoT services differ dramatically in terms of na?ture and constraints. For example, IoT services often rely on energy and CPU?constrained sensor technologies, regardless of whether the service is for home automation, smart building, e?health, or power or water metering on a regional or national scale. Also, some IoT services, such as dynamic monitoring of biometric data, manipulation of sensitive information, and pri?vacy needs to be safeguarded whenever this information is for?warded over the underlying IoT network infrastructure. This paper discusses how software?defined networking (SDN) can facilitate the deployment and operation of some advanced IoT services regardless of their nature or scope. SDN introduces a high degree of automation in service delivery and operation-from dynamic IoT service parameter exposure and negotiation to resource allocation, service fulfillment, and assurance. This paper does not argue that all IoT services must adopt SDN. Rather, it is left to the discretion of operators to decide which IoT services can best leverage SDN capabilities. This paper only discusses managed IoT services, i.e., services that are op?erated by a service provider.

Dynamic Routing Optimization Algorithm for Software Defined Networking

Time and space complexity is themost critical problemof the current routing optimization algorithms for Software Defined Networking(SDN).To overcome this complexity,researchers use meta-heuristic techniques inside the routing optimization algorithms in the OpenFlow(OF)based large scale SDNs.This paper proposes a hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm to optimize the dynamic routing problem for the large scale SDNs.Due to the dynamic nature of SDNs,the proposed algorithm uses amutation operator to overcome the memory-based problem of the ant colony algorithm.Besides,it uses the box-covering method and the k-means clustering method to divide the SDN network to overcome the problemof time and space complexity.The results of the proposed algorithm compared with the results of other similar algorithms and it shows that the proposed algorithm can handle the dynamic network changing,reduce the network congestion,the delay and running times and the packet loss rates.

A Novel Floodless Service Discovery Mechanism Designed for Software-Defined Networking

The low-cost,self-configuration capability and "plug-and-play" feature of Ethernet establishes its dominant position in the local area networks(LAN).However,it is hard to extend to large scale because of the legacy broadcast-based service discovery mechanism.Therefore,to solve this problem,a new split network architecture named Software-Defined Networking(SDN) is introduced in this paper,and a novel floodless service discovery mechanism(FSDM)for SDN is designed.For the FSDM,the widespread broadcast messages for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol(DHCP) and Address Resolution Protocol(ARP) are considered especially,respectively.Then the DHCP relay and ARP proxy are proposed to handle DHCP broadcast messages and ARP broadcast messages,respectively.The proposed FSDM in this paper can eliminate flooding completely,reserve the autoconfiguration characteristics.Particularly,there is no need to change the existing hardware,software and protocols of hosts for the proposed scheme.Finally,the simulation results are demonstrated to show that our proposed model allows redundant links existed in network and has the property of scalability,which can significantly reduce network traffic in data plane and control traffic in control plane,and decrease the overhead of control plane.

Workload-aware request routing in cloud data center using software-defined networking

Large latency of applications will bring revenue loss to cloud infrastructure providers in the cloud data center. The existing controllers of software-defined networking architecture can fetch and process traffic information in the network. Therefore, the controllers can only optimize the network latency of applications. However, the serving latency of applications is also an important factor in delivered user-experience for arrival requests. Unintelligent request routing will cause large serving latency if arrival requests are allocated to overloaded virtual machines. To deal with the request routing problem, this paper proposes the workload-aware software-defined networking controller architecture. Then, request routing algorithms are proposed to minimize the total round trip time for every type of request by considering the congestion in the network and the workload in virtual machines（VMs）. This paper finally provides the evaluation of the proposed algorithms in a simulated prototype. The simulation results show that the proposed methodology is efficient compared with the existing approaches.

Using Heuristics to the Controller Placement Problem in Software-Defined Multihop Wireless Networking

Solving the controller placement problem (CPP) in an SDN architecture with multiple controllers has a significant impact on control overhead in the network, especially in multihop wireless networks (MWNs). The generated control overhead consists of controller-device and inter-controller communications to discover the network topology, exchange configurations, and set up and modify flow tables in the control plane. However, due to the high complexity of the proposed optimization model to the CPP, heuristic algorithms have been reported to find near-optimal solutions faster for large-scale wired networks. In this paper, the objective is to extend those existing heuristic algorithms to solve a proposed optimization model to the CPP in software-defined multihop wireless networking (SDMWN).Our results demonstrate that using ranking degrees assigned to the possible controller placements, including the average distance to other devices as a degree or the connectivity degree of each placement, the extended heuristic algorithms are able to achieve the optimal solution in small-scale networks in terms of the generated control overhead and the number of controllers selected in the network. As a result, using extended heuristic algorithms, the average number of hops among devices and their assigned controllers as well as among controllers will be reduced. Moreover, these algorithms are able tolower the control overhead in large-scale networks and select fewer controllers compared to an extended algorithm that solves the CPP in SDMWN based on a randomly selected controller placement approach.

A Methodology for Reliability of WSN Based on Software Defined Network in Adaptive Industrial Environment

As communication technology and smart manufacturing have developed, the industrial internet of things(IIo T)has gained considerable attention from academia and industry.Wireless sensor networks(WSNs) have many advantages with broad applications in many areas including environmental monitoring, which makes it a very important part of IIo T. However,energy depletion and hardware malfunctions can lead to node failures in WSNs. The industrial environment can also impact the wireless channel transmission, leading to network reliability problems, even with tightly coupled control and data planes in traditional networks, which obviously also enhances network management cost and complexity. In this paper, we introduce a new software defined network(SDN), and modify this network to propose a framework called the improved software defined wireless sensor network(improved SD-WSN). This proposed framework can address the following issues. 1) For a large scale heterogeneous network, it solves the problem of network management and smooth merging of a WSN into IIo T. 2) The network coverage problem is solved which improves the network reliability. 3) The framework addresses node failure due to various problems, particularly related to energy consumption.Therefore, it is necessary to improve the reliability of wireless sensor networks, by developing certain schemes to reduce energy consumption and the delay time of network nodes under IIo T conditions. Experiments have shown that the improved approach significantly reduces the energy consumption of nodes and the delay time, thus improving the reliability of WSN.

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.

Software Defined Optical Networks and Its Innovation Environment

Software defined optical networks （SDONs） integrate software defined technology with optical communication networks and represent the promising development trend of future optical networks. The key technologies for SDONs include software-defined optical transmission, switching, and networking. The main features include control and transport separation, hard-ware universalization, protocol standardization, controllable optical network, and flexible optical network applications. This paper introduces software defined optical networks and its innovation environment, in terms of network architecture, protocol extension solution, experiment platform and typical applications. Batch testing has been conducted to evaluate the performance of this SDON testbed. The results show that the SDON testbed has good scalability in different sizes. Meanwhile, we notice that controller output bandwidth has great influence on lightpath setup delay.