On Designing a Resilient SDN C/M-Plane for Multi-Controller Failure in Disaster Situations

Abstract

Network survivability is the ability to maintain service continuity in the presence of failures. This ability might be critical in times where large-scale failures occur, as in the case of disasters. In the past years, Software Defined Networking (SDN) has shown a great potential to allow network programmability by segregating the Control/Management Plane (C/M-Plane) from the forwarding or Data Plane (D-Plane). The controller, a centralized entity, has an overview of the entire network under its domain, which allows it to make informed routing decisions. However, the controller becomes a single-point-of-failure as network devices will have limited knowledge if not connected to a controller. Moreover, in disaster situations, if the affected area is considerably large, there is a high probability that more than a single controller will fail in a short period. Various studies, either following a protection or restoration techniques, have been proposed to address resiliency on SDN, but most of them only consider link or device failure; however, the failure of various controllers due to a large-scale disaster is less explored. In this paper, we consider multi-controller failure and propose a mechanism to reduce the non-operational network devices in disaster situations. Preliminary results show that, by applying the proposed approach, it is possible to achieve substantial improvements in network survivability, with considerably less cost of implementation than existing methods. In particular, using simulation, we achieved a 20% decrease of non-operational devices at the C/M-Plane; and an increase of 30% of success rate at the D-Plane, even if half of the controllers in the topology failed.

Request delay and survivability optimization for software defined‐wide area networking (SD‐WAN) using multi‐agent deep reinforcement learning

“…Indeed, SD-WAN controller prevents the network ability to meet new application demands and react to actions from physical network. 32 To reduce the chances of uncontrolled operation, it is preferable to keep the switch connected to the controller through the CPE. 13 In our study, the second objective is to maximize the network connectivity between forwarding switches and the controller.…”

A novel security mechanism for software defined network based on Blockchain

“…Network survivability is the ability to maintain service continuity in the presence of failures. In [17], the network survivability of SDN is discussed in disaster situations. The solution in [17] considers multi-controller failure and the mechanism can reduce the non-operational network devices in disaster situations.…”

“…In [17], the network survivability of SDN is discussed in disaster situations. The solution in [17] considers multi-controller failure and the mechanism can reduce the non-operational network devices in disaster situations. Preliminary results show that, by applying the proposed new approach, it is possible to achieve substantial improvements in network survivability.…”

“…It is a key research area to resolve the problems that mentioned above. The redundant manner that uses the multi-controller architecture is a generic solution, such as the master-slave backup [10][11][12][13] and Byzantine Fault Tolerance scheme (BFT) [14][15][16][17]. In the master-slave backup architecture, these two controllers that are respectively called the master controller and the slave controller are used.…”

“…However, the method can't fundamentally solve the single point of failure. In [14][15][16][17], Byzantine fault-tolerant mechanisms based on Byzantine protocol are proposed to achieve the data consistency on different controllers and to confirm a failure controller. However, in these mechanisms, when the main controller fails, a view shift needs to be performed, which can cause a great overhead of network resources.…”