Modelling Adversarial Flow in Software-Defined Industrial Control Networks Using a Queueing Network Model

Abstract

In recent years, software defined networking (SDN) has been proposed for enhancing the security of industrial control networks. However, its ability to guarantee the quality of service (QoS) requirements of such networks in the presence of adversarial flow still needs to be investigated. Queueing theory and particularly queueing network models have long been employed to study the performance and QoS characteristics of networks. The latter appears to be particularly suitable to capture the behaviour of SDN owing to the dependencies between layers, planes and components in an SDN architecture. Also, several authors have used queueing network models to study the behaviour of different application of SDN architectures, but none of the existing works have considered the strong periodic network traffic in software-defined industrial control networks. In this paper, we propose a queueing network model for softwaredefined industrial control networks, taking into account the strong periodic patterns of the network traffic in the data plane. We derive the performance measures for the analytical model and apply the queueing network model to study the effect of adversarial flow in software-defined industrial control networks.

Buffering and prioritization in switches for fast processing table‐miss packets in software‐defined networks

“…In the analysis, we handle them independently because the previous literature that uses independence assumption can obtain acceptable results with low complexity 11,14,15 . Many previous analyses in SDN considered one queue in the switch and one queue in the controller and simply adopted M/M/1 for both queues 11,14,15,26 . However, we propose a tractable analytical model, which uses MMPP/M/1 for the low‐priority queue Q L and M X /M/1 for the high‐priority queue Q HB in the switch, to calculate the packet delay.…”

A Holistic Approach for Enhancing Critical Infrastructure Protection: Research Agenda

“…The main objective of the review is to serve as a foundation for determining the appropriate asset-centric threat modelling approaches that could be employed for a given scenario. Moreover, our research outcomes which can be categorized into the second part of the holistic approach are published in [18,22,23]. We remarked in [23] that software-defined networks (SDN) are widely being adopted and are likely to be deployed in critical infrastructure.…”

“…To this end, we studied the existing literature on the analysis of SDN using queueing networks and proposed ways in which models need to be extended in order to study attacks. We then employed one of the proposed models to study the effect of adversarial flow in software-defined industrial control networks using a queueing network model in [22]. This work provides useful insights for benchmarking and facilitates the identification of factors that could cause the network to breach the stringent QoS requirements in software-defined industrial control networks.…”

Performance evaluation of software‐defined wide area network based on queueing theory

“…Modelling and analysing queue systems help to minimise their limitation and maximise the use of the resources. The analysis may predict the expected time to use resources or the expected time to wait for customers in queues [21]. This information is later used to make decisions as to when and how to upgrade the system.…”

“…These VPNs are carried in a single IPsec tunnel. According to the structure of the vEdge router shown in Figure (21), the SD-WAN VPNs are divided into many types, the most important of which are as follows:…”