I- Introduction

II- Related Work

III- NFV Framework and Scope

IV- System Design and Implementation

V- Experimental Validation

VI- RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS

VII- CONCLUSION

References

ABSTRACT

SDN and NFV collaboratively recognized as the most promising bearing for flexible programmability of network control functions and protocols with dynamic usage of network resources. SDN provides abstraction of network resources over well-defined APIs to achieve underlying topologyindependent multiple tenant networks with required QoS and SLAs. NFV paradigm deploys network functions as software instances namely VNFs on commodity hardware using virtualization techniques. This way, virtual IP functions such as load balancing, routing and forwarding or firewall can operate as VNF in cloud with positive outcome in network performance. In this paper we aimed to achieve traffic load balancing by using virtual SDN controller (vSDN) as a VNF. With vSDN, when there is uneven and increased load, secondary vSDN controllers can be added to share this load. Need of secondary vSDN is determined and a copy vSDN with exactly same configurations as original vSDN is created which operates accurately and shares traffic load balancing tasks with original vSDN controller. Both vSDN controllers independently placed in cloud with transparency assuring that every client in network is familiar with the existence of the newly created secondary vSDN controller. We experimentally validated the load balancing in Fat-Tree topology using two vSDN controllers in Mininet emulator. Results showed 50% improvement in Average Load, 41% improvement in Average Delay and considerable improvements in terms of Ping Response, Bandwidth Utilization and Throughput of the system.

INTRODUCTION

SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORKING is a constantly progressive technology that offers more flexible programmability support for network control functions and protocols. SDN provides logical central control model for implementation and maintenance of programmable networks by utilizing the concept of decoupling of data plane and control plane [1] over a well-marked and comprehensible controlling protocol like OpenFlow Figure 1. OpenFlow is one of the control plane protocols standardized as per Open Networking Foundation’s (ONF) [2] recommendation for interfacing of components with their lower-level components in the network. It allows the policies, logical switch abstraction, configuration, outlining of high-level instructions and network resource administration to initiate functionalities in small timelines to hide the vendor-specific component details, enhancing the ability of hardware to use and exchange information in multi-vendor distributions and environments [3].