Impact of SDN Controller’s Performance on Quality of Service

Abstract

Software Defined Networking is a paradigm in network architecture; that is quickly becoming commonplace in modern telecommunication systems. It facilitates network customization for the requirements of different applications and simplifies the implementation of new services. Since its proposal, a significant evolution in its functionality has occurred. However, this development brought along problems of efficiency and performance, which are currently under research. A number of requirements has to be met, if Software Defined Networking is going to be the next step in the Next-Generation Networks progression. The central part of itthe SDN controllerhas to put minimum strain on the system and provide performance which does not impede Quality of Service requirements. In this paper, the results of a research on SDN controller's performance have been provided in the context of keeping up with flows' QoS. For this, an emulated-physical research platform has been implemented. This research environment utilizes traffic generated accordingly to ITU-T recommendations to validate QoS parameters. The platform is given a thorough description. The results obtained from it take under consideration the implemented traffic sources, as well as the intensity of traffic handled by the controller and the traffic load of data plane links. Authors indicate that even without breaking the limitations set for delays in QoS, the impact of the controller workload is noticeable, which should be mitigated by applying appropriate resource control.