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.

Performance Evaluation of Topologies for Multi-Domain Software-Defined Networking

Software-defined networking(SDN)is widely used in multiple types of data center networks,and these distributed data center networks can be integrated into a multi-domain SDN by utilizing multiple controllers.However,the network topology of each control domain of SDN will affect the performance of the multidomain network,so performance evaluation is required before the deployment of the multi-domain SDN.Besides,there is a high cost to build real multi-domain SDN networks with different topologies,so it is necessary to use simulation testing methods to evaluate the topological performance of the multi-domain SDN network.As there is a lack of existing methods to construct a multi-domain SDN simulation network for the tool to evaluate the topological performance automatically,this paper proposes an automated multi-domain SDN topology performance evaluation framework,which supports multiple types of SDN network topologies in cooperating to construct a multi-domain SDN network.The framework integrates existing single-domain SDN simulation tools with network performance testing tools to realize automated performance evaluation of multidomain SDN network topologies.We designed and implemented a Mininet-based simulation tool that can connect multiple controllers and run user-specified topologies in multiple SDN control domains to build and test multi-domain SDN networks faster.Then,we used the tool to perform performance tests on various data center network topologies in single-domain and multi-domain SDN simulation environments.Test results show that Space Shuffle has the most stable performance in a single-domain environment,and Fat-tree has the best performance in a multi-domain environment.Also,this tool has the characteristics of simplicity and stability,which can meet the needs of multi-domain SDN topology performance evaluation.

Open-Source Software Defined Networking Controllers:State-of-the-Art,Challenges and Solutions for Future Network Providers

Software Defined Networking(SDN)is programmable by separation of forwarding control through the centralization of the controller.The controller plays the role of the‘brain’that dictates the intelligent part of SDN technology.Various versions of SDN controllers exist as a response to the diverse demands and functions expected of them.There are several SDN controllers available in the open market besides a large number of commercial controllers;some are developed tomeet carrier-grade service levels and one of the recent trends in open-source SDN controllers is the Open Network Operating System(ONOS).This paper presents a comparative study between open source SDN controllers,which are known as Network Controller Platform(NOX),Python-based Network Controller(POX),component-based SDN framework(Ryu),Java-based OpenFlow controller(Floodlight),OpenDayLight(ODL)and ONOS.The discussion is further extended into ONOS architecture,as well as,the evolution of ONOS controllers.This article will review use cases based on ONOS controllers in several application deployments.Moreover,the opportunities and challenges of open source SDN controllers will be discussed,exploring carriergrade ONOS for future real-world deployments,ONOS unique features and identifying the suitable choice of SDN controller for service providers.In addition,we attempt to provide answers to several critical questions relating to the implications of the open-source nature of SDN controllers regarding vendor lock-in,interoperability,and standards compliance,Similarly,real-world use cases of organizations using open-source SDN are highlighted and how the open-source community contributes to the development of SDN controllers.Furthermore,challenges faced by open-source projects,and considerations when choosing an open-source SDN controller are underscored.Then the role of Artificial Intelligence(AI)and Machine Learning(ML)in the evolution of open-source SDN controllers in light of recent research is indicated.In addition,the challenges and limitations associated with deploying open-source SDN controllers in production networks,how can they be mitigated,and finally how opensource SDN controllers handle network security and ensure that network configurations and policies are robust and resilient are presented.Potential opportunities and challenges for future Open SDN deployment are outlined to conclude the article.

Sea Turtle Foraging Optimization-Based Controller Placement with Blockchain-Assisted Intrusion Detection in Software-Defined Networks

Software-defined networking(SDN)algorithms are gaining increas-ing interest and are making networks flexible and agile.The basic idea of SDN is to move the control planes to more than one server’s named controllers and limit the data planes to numerous sending network components,enabling flexible and dynamic network management.A distinctive characteristic of SDN is that it can logically centralize the control plane by utilizing many physical controllers.The deployment of the controller—that is,the controller placement problem(CPP)—becomes a vital model challenge.Through the advancements of blockchain technology,data integrity between nodes can be enhanced with no requirement for a trusted third party.Using the lat-est developments in blockchain technology,this article designs a novel sea turtle foraging optimization algorithm for the controller placement problem(STFOA-CPP)with blockchain-based intrusion detection in an SDN environ-ment.The major intention of the STFOA-CPP technique is the maximization of lifetime,network connectivity,and load balancing with the minimization of latency.In addition,the STFOA-CPP technique is based on the sea turtles’food-searching characteristics of tracking the odour path of dimethyl sulphide(DMS)released from food sources.Moreover,the presented STFOA-CPP technique can adapt with the controller’s count mandated and the shift to controller mapping to variable network traffic.Finally,the blockchain can inspect the data integrity,determine significantly malicious input,and improve the robust nature of developing a trust relationship between sev-eral nodes in the SDN.To demonstrate the improved performance of the STFOA-CPP algorithm,a wide-ranging experimental analysis was carried out.The extensive comparison study highlighted the improved outcomes of the STFOA-CPP technique over other recent approaches.

Toward Secure Software-Defined Networks Using Machine Learning: A Review, Research Challenges, and Future Directions

Over the past few years,rapid advancements in the internet and communication technologies have led to increasingly intricate and diverse networking systems.As a result,greater intelligence is necessary to effectively manage,optimize,and maintain these systems.Due to their distributed nature,machine learning models are challenging to deploy in traditional networks.However,Software-Defined Networking(SDN)presents an opportunity to integrate intelligence into networks by offering a programmable architecture that separates data and control planes.SDN provides a centralized network view and allows for dynamic updates of flow rules and softwarebased traffic analysis.While the programmable nature of SDN makes it easier to deploy machine learning techniques,the centralized control logic also makes it vulnerable to cyberattacks.To address these issues,recent research has focused on developing powerful machine-learning methods for detecting and mitigating attacks in SDN environments.This paper highlighted the countermeasures for cyberattacks on SDN and how current machine learningbased solutions can overcome these emerging issues.We also discuss the pros and cons of using machine learning algorithms for detecting and mitigating these attacks.Finally,we highlighted research issues,gaps,and challenges in developing machine learning-based solutions to secure the SDN controller,to help the research and network community to develop more robust and reliable solutions.

Multi-Attack Intrusion Detection System for Software-Defined Internet of Things Network

Currently,the Internet of Things(IoT)is revolutionizing communi-cation technology by facilitating the sharing of information between different physical devices connected to a network.To improve control,customization,flexibility,and reduce network maintenance costs,a new Software-Defined Network(SDN)technology must be used in this infrastructure.Despite the various advantages of combining SDN and IoT,this environment is more vulnerable to various attacks due to the centralization of control.Most methods to ensure IoT security are designed to detect Distributed Denial-of-Service(DDoS)attacks,but they often lack mechanisms to mitigate their severity.This paper proposes a Multi-Attack Intrusion Detection System(MAIDS)for Software-Defined IoT Networks(SDN-IoT).The proposed scheme uses two machine-learning algorithms to improve detection efficiency and provide a mechanism to prevent false alarms.First,a comparative analysis of the most commonly used machine-learning algorithms to secure the SDN was performed on two datasets:the Network Security Laboratory Knowledge Discovery in Databases(NSL-KDD)and the Canadian Institute for Cyberse-curity Intrusion Detection Systems(CICIDS2017),to select the most suitable algorithms for the proposed scheme and for securing SDN-IoT systems.The algorithms evaluated include Extreme Gradient Boosting(XGBoost),K-Nearest Neighbor(KNN),Random Forest(RF),Support Vector Machine(SVM),and Logistic Regression(LR).Second,an algorithm for selecting the best dataset for machine learning in Intrusion Detection Systems(IDS)was developed to enable effective comparison between the datasets used in the development of the security scheme.The results showed that XGBoost and RF are the best algorithms to ensure the security of SDN-IoT and to be applied in the proposed security system,with average accuracies of 99.88%and 99.89%,respectively.Furthermore,the proposed security scheme reduced the false alarm rate by 33.23%,which is a significant improvement over prevalent schemes.Finally,tests of the algorithm for dataset selection showed that the rates of false positives and false negatives were reduced when the XGBoost and RF algorithms were trained on the CICIDS2017 dataset,making it the best for IDS compared to the NSL-KDD dataset.

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).

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.

Quality of Service Improvement with Optimal Software-Defined Networking Controller and Control Plane Clustering

The controller is indispensable in software-defined networking(SDN).With several features,controllers monitor the network and respond promptly to dynamic changes.Their performance affects the quality-of-service(QoS)in SDN.Every controller supports a set of features.However,the support of the features may be more prominent in one controller.Moreover,a single controller leads to performance,single-point-of-failure(SPOF),and scalability problems.To overcome this,a controller with an optimum feature set must be available for SDN.Furthermore,a cluster of optimum feature set controllers will overcome an SPOF and improve the QoS in SDN.Herein,leveraging an analytical network process(ANP),we rank SDN controllers regarding their supporting features and create a hierarchical control plane based cluster(HCPC)of the highly ranked controller computed using the ANP,evaluating their performance for the OS3E topology.The results demonstrated in Mininet reveal that a HCPC environment with an optimum controller achieves an improved QoS.Moreover,the experimental results validated in Mininet show that our proposed approach surpasses the existing distributed controller clustering(DCC)schemes in terms of several performance metrics i.e.,delay,jitter,throughput,load balancing,scalability and CPU(central processing unit)utilization.

Challenge-based collaborative intrusion detection in software-defined networking: An evaluation

Software-Defined Networking(SDN)is an emerging architecture that enables a computer network to be intelligently and centrally controlled via software applications.It can help manage the whole network environment in a consistent and holistic way,without the need of understanding the underlying network structure.At present,SDN may face many challenges like insider attacks,i.e.,the centralized control plane would be attacked by malicious underlying devices and switches.To protect the security of SDN,effective detection approaches are indispensable.In the literature,challenge-based collaborative intrusion detection networks(CIDNs)are an effective detection framework in identifying malicious nodes.It calculates the nodes'reputation and detects a malicious node by sending out a special message called a challenge.In this work,we devise a challenge-based CIDN in SDN and measure its performance against malicious internal nodes.Our results demonstrate that such a mechanism can be effective in SDN environments.

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.

Software-Defined Networking

Software- defined networking （SDN） is a promising technology for next-generation networking and has attracted much attention from academics, network equipment manufacturer, network operators, and service providers. It has found center, and enterprise networks. applications in mobile, data The SDN architecture has a centralized, programmable control plane that is separate from the data plane. SDN also provides the ability to control and manage virtualized resources and networks without requiring new hardware technologies. This is a major shift in networking technologies.

A Novel Features Prioritization Mechanism for Controllers in Software-Defined Networking

The controller in software-defined networking(SDN)acts as strategic point of control for the underlying network.Multiple controllers are available,and every single controller retains a number of features such as the OpenFlow version,clustering,modularity,platform,and partnership support,etc.They are regarded as vital when making a selection among a set of controllers.As such,the selection of the controller becomes a multi-criteria decision making(MCDM)problem with several features.Hence,an increase in this number will increase the computational complexity of the controller selection process.Previously,the selection of controllers based on features has been studied by the researchers.However,the prioritization of features has gotten less attention.Moreover,several features increase the computational complexity of the selection process.In this paper,we propose a mathematical modeling for feature prioritization with analytical network process(ANP)bridge model for SDN controllers.The results indicate that a prioritized features model lead to a reduction in the computational complexity of the selection of SDN controller.In addition,our model generates prioritized features for SDN controllers.

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.

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.

An Efficient Intrusion Detection Framework in Software-Defined Networking for Cybersecurity Applications

Network management and multimedia data mining techniques have a great interest in analyzing and improving the network traffic process.In recent times,the most complex task in Software Defined Network(SDN)is security,which is based on a centralized,programmable controller.Therefore,monitoring network traffic is significant for identifying and revealing intrusion abnormalities in the SDN environment.Consequently,this paper provides an extensive analysis and investigation of the NSL-KDD dataset using five different clustering algorithms:K-means,Farthest First,Canopy,Density-based algorithm,and Exception-maximization(EM),using the Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis(WEKA)software to compare extensively between these five algorithms.Furthermore,this paper presents an SDN-based intrusion detection system using a deep learning(DL)model with the KDD(Knowledge Discovery in Databases)dataset.First,the utilized dataset is clustered into normal and four major attack categories via the clustering process.Then,a deep learning method is projected for building an efficient SDN-based intrusion detection system.The results provide a comprehensive analysis and a flawless reasonable study of different kinds of attacks incorporated in the KDD dataset.Similarly,the outcomes reveal that the proposed deep learning method provides efficient intrusion detection performance compared to existing techniques.For example,the proposed method achieves a detection accuracy of 94.21%for the examined dataset.

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.

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.