SDN-OpenFlow Topology Discovery: An Overview of Performance Issues

Abstract

Software-defined networking (SDN) is an innovative architecture that separates the control plane from the data plane to simplify and speed up the management of large networks. This means the control logic has been moved from the network hardware level to the centralized control management level. Therefore, the use of the OpenFlow Discovery Protocol (OFDP) is one of the most common protocols used to discover the network topology in a data plane and then transmit it to the control plane for management. However, OFDP has various shortcomings in its performance such as exchanging too many messages between both levels (control and data), which in turn increases the load on the SDN-Controller. Additionally, since the application layer depends entirely on the network topologies plotted in the control plane, it is very important to obtain accurate network topology information from data plane. Therefore, after providing background on topology discovery protocols to the reader, we will concentrate on performance issues. The present study identifies and discuss the primary concerns involved in the complex query process, infrastructure, influencing factors, and challenges for the topology discovery process. Furthermore, this paper will present several recent studies that have overcome and enhanced these issues. In addition, open discussion and future work concerning these issues are also discussed.