A Scalable Hierarchically Distributed Architecture for Next-Generation Applications

Abstract

The rigidity of traditional network architectures, with tightly coupled control and data planes, impairs their ability to adapt to highly dynamic requirements of future application domains. While Software-Defined Networking (SDN) can provide the required dynamism, it suffers from scalability issues. Therefore, efforts have been made to propose alternative decentralized solutions, such as the flat distributed SDN architecture. Such alternatives address the scalability problem for mainly local flows, but are impaired by a substantial increase in the overhead for cross-domain flow setup. To manage the trade-off between scalability and overhead, there is a need for intermediate hierarchical solutions. However, these have not been explored to the complete potential so far. Furthermore, the Network Function Virtualization (NFV) paradigm complements SDN by offering computational and storage services in the form of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). When integrated seamlessly, both SDN and NFV can offer solutions to the problems posed by highly dynamic application domains. Hence, this work proposes a scalable hierarchical SDN control plane architecture for SDN/NFV-based next-generation application domains such as immersive media delivery system. We have implemented the proposed architecture based on the well-known state-of-the-art ZeroSDN controller. To evaluate the performance of the architecture, we have implemented an on-demand immersive media (point cloud) streaming application and varied the load on the control plane using the background traffic. To benchmark our solution, we have evaluated its performance in comparison with the centralized and flat distributed architectures. We show that the proposed architecture performs better than the rest in terms of scalability, lost flows, and processing latency. Our study shows that the proposed architecture when distributed to three controllers, accepts 23% more flows with almost 70% reduced processing latency compared to the state-of-the-art ONOS controller.

From classical to quantum machine learning: survey on routing optimization in 6G software defined networking

“…Hence it is crucial to examine to what extent the network monitoring should be delegated to a single controller. Hierarchical SDN architectures were proposed as a possible solution to address this issue where the control plane is built from multiple layers of controllers and the load is shared between these layers (Ravuri et al, 2022). However, this solution suffers from the problem of the "synchronization between the controllers" and it is still an open research question that needs to be investigated (Zhang et al, 2019a;Domeke et al, 2022).…”

Computing Power Network: Multi-Objective Optimization-Based Routing

“…Equation (4) shows that the end node of the previous hop is equal to the start node of the next hop of the k th service originating from the source node s for any intermediate node m, where the number of services flowing into or out of m is the same to ensure the routed path is continuous.…”

“…To satisfy the computing demands of intelligent services, computing is gradually moving from the cloud to the edge [ 3 , 4 ]. End computing has emerged based on mobile and IoT devices.…”

Adaptive Partially Reliable Delivery of Immersive Media Over QUIC-HTTP/3

“…Networking architectures are undergoing a transformation to cope with such requirements, where efforts are being made to offer solutions on several layers of the network stack. There are a range of solutions offered on the network layer, such as software-defined networking (SDN) [3], service chaining [4], and network slicing [5]. However, while such solutions offer resources on the network layer, they are not optimized to deal with the dynamic packet loss ratios experienced by future wireless networks.…”