A Survey on Software Defined Networking: Architecture for Next Generation Network

Abstract

The evolution of software defined networking (SDN) has played a significant role in the development of next-generation networks (NGN). SDN as a programmable network having ''service provisioning on the fly'' has induced a keen interest both in academic world and industry. In this article, a comprehensive survey is presented on SDN advancement over conventional network. The paper covers historical evolution in relation to SDN, functional architecture of the SDN and its related technologies, and OpenFlow standards/protocols, including the basic concept of interfacing of OpenFlow with network elements (NEs) such as optical switches. In addition a selective architecture survey has been conducted. Our proposed architecture on software defined heterogeneous network, points towards new technology enabling the opening of new vistas in the domain of network technology, which will facilitate in handling of huge internet traffic and helps infrastructure and service providers to customize their resources dynamically. Besides, current research projects and various activities as being carried out to standardize SDN as NGN by different standard development organizations (SODs) have been duly elaborated to judge how this technology moves towards standardization.Conventional networks implement various dedicated algorithms and set of rules on hardware components like application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) to monitor and control the flow of data in the network, supervising routing paths and responsible for configuring various NEs with each other in the network path [5,6]. When the packets are received by the routing devices, in a conventional network, it employs a set of rules, which are already entrenched in its firmware to detect the routing path for that packets as well as address of the destination device in the network. Generally data packets are handled in similar manner, which may be directed to the same destination and all this occurs in an inexpensive routing device. Moreover, special routing device i.e., Cisco router may have the ability to treat different packets depending on their nature and contents. It allows the administrator to mark out priorities of different flows through customized local router programming. Thus, the queue size in each router can manage packets flow directly. Such a customized local router setup allows the operators to handle traffic more efficiently in terms of congestion and prioritization control. The current network devices have the limitation on network performance due to high network traffic, which hinders the network performance in terms of speed, scalability, security, and reliability. The current network devices lack the dynamism in operation, which is related to different types of packets and their contents. It may be attributed to inability to reprograming of the network operation due to the J Netw Syst Manage (2017) 25:321-374 323 MotivationMotivation for adopting SDN technology as NGN can be visualized from the facts given hereunder:• To accommodate the fast expending traff...

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