BalanceFlow: Controller load balancing for OpenFlow networks

Abstract

In the discussion about Future Internet, Software-Defined Networking (SDN), enabled by OpenFlow, is currently seen as one of the most promising paradigm. While the availability and scalability concerns rises as a single controller could be alleviated by using replicate or distributed controllers, there lacks a flexible mechanism to allow controller load balancing. This paper proposes BalanceFlow, a controller load balancing architecture for OpenFlow networks. By utilizing CONTROLLER X action extension for OpenFlow switches and cross-controller communication, one of the controllers, called "super controller", can flexibly tune the flow-requests handled by each controller, without introducing unacceptable propagation latencies. Experiments based on real topology show that BalanceFlow can adjust the load of each controller dynamically.

An SDN Based Intra-Domain Routing and Resource Management Model

“…Controllers may behave like routers in traditional networks because each of which makes its own decision without knowing decision of others. BalanceFlow [10] aims to balance load of control traffic in OpenFlow Wide-Area Networks (WAN) with multiple controllers. There is only one Super Controller that is in charge of other controllers.…”

Research on Load Balance Method in SDN

“…A number of load balance system have been proposed in [5]- [7]. In these systems, controller is used to analyze replying information from OpenFlow switches and modify the flow-tables by specific load balance strategy, so as to efficiently plan data transmission path and achieve load balance in SDN.…”

A Load Balancing Model based on Load-aware for Distributed Controllers

“…BalanceFlow architecture [9] used "super controller" to run flow-requests partition when controller load imbalance is detected. Once the "super controller" has a fault, the flow-requests partition function would be disable.…”

“…In 2012, the paper [8] designed a high scalable mechanism named MSDN to balance the data flow initialization requests and then those requests were parallel processed with a share global network view. In the same year, Yannan Hu proposed BalanceFlow [9], a controller load balancing architecture for OpenFlow networks with by utilizing CONTROLLER X action extension for OpenFlow switches. The "super controller" can flexibly tune the flow-requests handled by each controller, without introducing unacceptable propagation latencies architecture.…”