A Survey on SDN and SDCN Traffic Measurement: Existing Approaches and Research Challenges

Abstract

The Software-Defined Network (SDN) is a next-generation network that uses OpenFlow to decouple the control plane from the data plane of forwarding devices. Other protocols for southbound interfaces include ForCES and POF. However, some security issues might be in action on the SDN, so that attackers can take control of the SDN control plane. Since live video calling, QoS control, high bandwidth needs, and resource management are inevitable in any SDN/Software-Defined Cellular Network (SDCN), traffic monitoring is an integral approach for safeguarding against DDoS, heavy hitters, and superspreaders. In such a scenario, SDN traffic measurement comes into action. Thus, we survey SDN traffic measurement solutions to assess how these solutions can make a secure, efficient, and robust SDN/SDCN architecture. This research classifies SDN traffic measurement solutions according to network application behavior and compares several ML approaches. Furthermore, we find out the challenges related to SDN/SDCN traffic measurement and the future scope of research, which will guide the design and development of more advanced traffic measurement solutions for a scalable, heterogeneous, hierarchical, and widely deployed SDN/SDCN architecture. In more detail, we list different kinds of practical machine learning (ML) approaches to analyze how we can improve traffic measurement performances. We conclude that using ML in SDN traffic measurement solutions will help secure SDNs/SDCNs in complementary ways.