Hybrid SDN Performance: Switching between Centralized and Distributed Modes under Unreliable Control Communication Channels

Abstract

Software-defined networking generally assumes ideal control channels between controller and network nodes. This may not be the case in challenged environments that are becoming more common due to dense and reduced-coverage 5G deployments and use cases requiring cost-effective wireless transport networks. In this paper, we evaluate the impact on network performance of unreliable controller-to-node communication channels, propose a hybrid SDN (hSDN) solution that switches between centralized and distributed operational modes depending on network conditions, and evaluate this solution under a variety of network scenarios (e.g., link impairments or packet loss ratios) designed to assess its operational limits. The results show that the proposed solution substantially improved the aggregated throughput, particularly when control channel packet loss ratios increased, while only showing a slight increase in average latency (e.g., 28% throughput improvement for 20% control packet losses). This enables network operation in hard conditions under which a canonical centralized SDN control would result in a nonoperational network.